Optimizing keywords are an essential part of Pay-Per Click Marketing that is sometimes overlooked when troubleshooting low Click through Rates (CTR) or high Cost per Clicks (CPC). Instead of researching keyword-match type performance, we are quick to look at ad copy changes if CTR is low or deleting the keyword from the account.

Reviewing and optimizing keywords based on match types can help to increase ROI, traffic and ad position. For those of you new to adCenter, I recommend that you visit Hana Ondrusek’s previous article, “Understanding How Match Types Affect Your PPC Campaigns in adCenter” prior to reading this post.

Today, I am going to provide a step by step tutorial on how to optimize keywords based on match type performance using adCenter reports and the adCenter Add-In for Excel.

Pulling an adCenter Report with Delivered Match Types

A great resource to view keyword performance based on match type is to use the Delivered match types option when pulling an adCenter Keyword Performance report. In order to view the Delivered match type metric in your report, the following two steps are needed:

1) Keyword Performance -> Change Columns and layout -> Add or Remove Columns -> Select “Delivered match type”

2) Keyword Performance -> Filter your results -> Filter by Delivered match types

Running a Custom Monetization Report using the adCenter Add-In
Once you have downloaded your Keyword Performance report from adCenter, you can use the adCenter Add-In as guidance to compare how your keywords are performing on adCenter and if adjustments are needed. For today in my example data, I am going to use one keyword, “new car”.

Prior to pulling this report, I thought that I had a poor performing keyword (CTR of 1.37%, CPC of $2.96 and an average position of 4.88). After looking at my Keyword Performance report, it appears broad match performance impacted the overall CTR and average position of this keyword.

Using the adCenter Add-In’s “Monetization” feature, you can pull key performance indicators for a specific keyword to see overall adCenter performance. If you would like to customize your “Monetization” report settings when using this feature, you select your keyword(s) in Excel, followed by selecting “Advanced Algorithm” in the Excel ribbon and then the “Monetization” option (this is the option I chose). Once you have chosen “Monetization”, you can further customize. To view performance by match type and position, you would select the following:

After clicking finish, the Monetization report will populate in Excel and look like:

Using adCenter Add-In Monetization Data to Improve Keyword Performance

From comparing my traffic on phrase match for position 2, I have a healthy CTR and CPC but low traffic. My max CPC is healthy, which means that I may need to re-allocate additional campaign budget to this ad group to get more traffic for this keyword.

Exact match is under performing as my average CPC is nearly capping out against my max CPC, yet I have a strong click through rate. This example tells me to increase my max CPC as users are clicking my ad despite averaging position 5.

When comparing broad match performance, I am nearly capping out my average CPC against my max CPC and I have an average position of 7.5 which means that users are likely not seeing my ad due to low placement. This will result in a low CTR. Through reviewing the Monetization report, it appears that positions 4 through 7 have lower CPC’s on average. I would recommend increasing your max CPC to increase your placement and garner additional clicks. Over time, if you have good performance in a higher position, your CPC’s will improve.

While the adCenter Add-In data provides performance guidance, it can be a great resource to gain additional insights into optimizing your keywords. Without an in-depth review of match types using the adCenter Add-In, you may have not known that your additional campaign budget will increase your performance or that your keyword performs better on phrase match instead of exact match.

For additional information on match types or the adCenter Add-In for Excel, please visit the adCenter Advertiser Blog. Thanks for reading!