Determining which keyword match types to bid on can be one of the most basic yet most confusing elements of setting up your search marketing campaign(s). To start with, even understanding the difference between the three options is difficult. I find that thinking about a specific keyword in terms of the different match types helps me straighten them out. For example, consider the keyword “big red dog”.
· If you were to bid on exact match your ad would only show for queries that exactly match that keyword, so only if a searcher types in “big red dog”.
· With a phrase match bid, your ad would show for all queries in which that phrase is used, so for example “big red dog for sale”.
· Broad match means that if anywhere in the searcher’s query those three words come up, your ad will show. For instance with the query “red house with big yard for dog”. Just a note that AdCenter will sometimes expand that broad match to include relevant terms such as “big red puppy” so that you are truly reaching all of your potential traffic.
Now that we’ve covered the basics, how do you decide which match types are right for your business and your keyword list? If my clients are looking to get maximum coverage I recommend bidding on all three match types. Why not just bid on broad match? It may be that you get a higher click through rate with your exact match bids which can lead to better ad positioning in exact match situations. Therefore in order to ensure the best match and the best position possible for your ad, you want to have bids for all three.
If, however, you have a very specific target audience, you may not want to cast such a wide net. In this case, you want to look carefully at your keyword list and think about all the possible searches that might include these terms; some of these possibilities may be irrelevant to the services or products you are trying to advertise. If you know there are queries you want to exclude, you can bid on phrase match and use negative keywords to exclude any unwanted traffic. If, however, you don’t want any traffic coming to your site by accident you should limit your bids to exact match. This way you know that only searchers who have specifically queried your keyword will see your ad. You have to realize, however, that by limiting your bidding strategy, the quality of the traffic may be high but the volume will probably be significantly lower.
If you already have a bidding strategy in place, you may still want to reassess your match type choices. A great way to do this is to run a keyword performance report and add the “delivered match types” column. This will show you how your keyword is matching to the queries of searchers. Even if you are only bidding on broad match, this will tell you if the majority of your traffic is coming to you on exact match. If this is the case you may want to try bidding on exact match and perhaps using a higher bid as this is how most searchers are reaching your ad. It is always possible to change your bidding strategy, so I recommend playing around with it. Find out what brings you the highest return on your investment and remember that bidding is only part of the picture; you also need to take a close look at your ad copy to make sure it is enticing and relevant to your search audience. If you’re all set with your search bids consider bidding on our content network which can expand your reach even further.
Now that you have a plan of action, it is fairly simple to go into adCenter and tweak your bids by drilling down to the keyword level in any of your ad groups. By clicking on the “edit bids” button you will have several options as shown below:
1: Here you can apply the same bid to all the keywords in this ad group.
2: Here you can choose to allow the system to estimate bids required for your ads to show in first position and update your bids to those. This is just an estimate, so there is no guarantee that your ads will start showing in the first position.
3: Click on Edit Keywords to add more keywords and to update match types.
4: You can update individual bids by clicking in the current bid box and typing in the new bid. Please note that there is a minimum bid of $.05.
After you have completed your changes be sure to hit the save button at the top or bottom of the page. You can always go in and change your bids, so continue to revise and tweak your bidding strategy to optimize for your business goals.