Google Adwords - Manipulating Keywords For Success
By Halstatt Pires, Sat Dec 10th

As you probably know, Google is a pay-per-click solutionoffered by Google. As with other PPCs, you are given the abilityto place your small advertisement on various platformscontrolled by Google. While the platform provides you with alarge audience, you must manipulate your keywords to generatesuccess.

Matching Options

When running an campaign, you can and should define whenyour keywords will appear in search results. To do this, you canselect matching options for each of your keywords to eitherreach a broad audience or target a niche.

The Google platform allows you to select four matchingoptions:

Broad Match

Broad match is the default setting for an campaign.Broad match means your ad will appear in search results when anycombination of the words in your keyword phrase search. Many anadvertiser has learned expensive lessons using this setting.Let’s look at an example.

Assume I am selling travel writing diaries and using “traveljournals” as my keyword phrase. Any time a person enters anycombination of “travel” and “journals” in a search, my



ad willappear. The ad will also appear for plurals and relevantvariations. While this may sound great at first glance, a broadmatch setting can result in low quality hits and poor conversionrates. A person searching for travel journal stories is going tosee my link. While a decent percentage will click my link, theyare far less likely to buy because they are just browsing. Usingbroad match, my costs go up and my conversions go down.

Broad match isn’t necessarily a bad option. If your productmakes a popular Christmas gift, you definitely want to use thebroad match option in November and December. You prospectiveclients will be motivated to buy. Even the “browsing” surferswill convert well.

Phrase Match

Phrase match is a matching option that gives you a bit morecontrol over your ads. Phrase match tells the platformto only show your ad when a search is conducted for theparticular order of your keyword phrase. Using the phrase matchoption for “travel journals”, my ad would appear when someonesearch for a phrase with “travel journals” in it, but not“journals travel”. To use phrase match for keyword phrases, yousimply place quotation marks around them.

Exact Match

Exact match is…exact match. It is the most targeted option. Youshould use it only if you want your ad to appear in searches forthe exact keyword phrase as written. For instance, if I want myad to appear in searches for “travel journals” and nothing else,I will use the exact match. To select the exact match option,simply place brackets (“[]”) around the keyword phrase.

Negative Match

No, the negative match option doesn’t involve cussing, insultsor adult sites. Instead, it allows you to designate whichkeyword phrase search results you do not want your ad to appearin. For example, I may not want my travel journal product toappear in search results for “Amazon travel journals”. I wouldsimply list the keyword phrase with a dash (-) in front of itand my ad will not appear. The negative match option is atremendous option for eliminating junk traffic from your Adwordscampaign.

The Google platform is a tremendous advertisingplatform. Effectively manipulate your keywords and it can be ahighly profitable one as well.

About the author:Halstatt Pires is with Marketing Titan- an Internet marketing andadvertising company comprised of a search engine optimizationspecialist providing meta tag optimization services and Internetmarketing consultant providing internet marketing solutionsthrough integrated design and programming services.