While advertising on Google is a smart strategy to maintain visibility and position your business in the eyes of potential and existing customers, there are other factors to consider.
A little optimization here and there is important, and keyword research is the right way to reach the intended audience. To prevent useless clicks and save your ad budget from being wasted, it is essential to understand when to use keyword match types when setting up Google Ads campaigns.
Understanding the different keyword match types and knowing when to use them in your campaign is crucial for a successful ad campaign. Let’s dive into the keyword match types and how they influence discoverability.
Broad Match
By default, all keywords in Google Ads are broad matches, meaning that by entering a keyword alone without using special characters like closed brackets or double quotation marks, a particular keyword is automatically a broad match type.
Once an ad campaign is optimized with a broad match type keyword, it may appear for searches related to the keyword, as well as for search terms that are synonymous with the selected keyword phrase.
For example, if the keyword for your ad is:
- Women’s shoes
Google could match your keyword for the following search terms (real-world queries that people search for on the internet to find products or services related to your business):
- Buy ladies’ footwear online.
- Best sneakers for women
- Stylish female sandals
When to Use Broad Match
- When you want to maximize smart bidding: Google’s algorithm can recognize high-intent searches that may not match your keywords. Smart bidding is an automated bidding feature or strategy used by Google’s AI machine learning to optimize conversion.
- If you want more traffic: Since Google can match your keyword for search terms it thinks are relevant for your campaign, including variations, synonyms, user intent, and related terms, your ad can get lots of traffic, including traffic that may not be pertinent to your business. However, analyzing data from your CMS and analytics tools can help you optimize the use of broad match keywords, allowing you to assess the performance of your campaign and determine whether it was successful or not.
- Setting up a broad match campaign does not require extensive time for keyword research: Unlike exact and phrase matches, which do, with broad match, you can launch a campaign in less than 20 minutes. But have in mind that just because it is easy doesn’t mean it is better.
Challenges of Broad Match
- Wasted Ad Spend: Your ad can show for low-intent searches, which can reduce the quality of your traffic and waste your ad budget.
- Higher click volume accompanied by a lower conversion rate: Broad match generates a high number of impressions and clicks, but since not all clicks are high-intent, the conversion rate is usually lower compared to phrase or exact match.
- Lower Quality Score: Irrelevant clicks can decrease quality score, a metric (rated from 1 to 10) that Google uses to measure ad quality in relation to other advertisers.
Exact Match
Exact match is a keyword targeting option that allows your ad to be served to people who are using search queries that match your keyword or have the same meaning as your keyword.
This match type offers the highest level of precision in Google Ads. For a keyword to be an exact match type, it has to be wrapped in a close bracket.
Exact match keywords can also trigger your ads to show if there is a close/slight variation from what a user is typing or searching on Google to find your product.
Example: if I have the exact match keyword:
- [Men’s slim fit blazer]
And someone searches for:
- Men’s slim-fit blazers
Google could match my keywords for the search query, which can trigger my ads.
Other search queries that could match the keyword also include:
- Slim-fit blazer for men
- Men slimfitted blazer
Note the slight variations in spellings because an exact match does not mean that your keyword must match the user’s search query word for word. Google does not want advertisers to miss out on traffic that is relevant, so Google made the changes in 2015.
When to Use Exact Match
- If you want to control your advertising budget by eliminating useless clicks, exact match is the perfect targeting option for your campaign.
- If you also want relevant traffic or clicks, that will improve your quality score. Quality score is a tool that determines the quality of your ad in relation to your competitors. It is ranked from 1 to 10.
- If you want a higher conversion and click-through rate (CTR) for your advert.
Challenges of Exact Match
- A common challenge in exact matches is a limited reach.
- Another factor to consider is its higher CPC (compared to broad match) due to its high conversion rate and relevant traffic.
- The process of managing keywords can be time-consuming. You will often have to manage a larger list of keywords to cover different variations, or else your campaign may underperform.
Phrase Match
Phrase match is a keyword match type marked by quotation marks (e.g., “photographer in Lagos”) that allows your ads to show on searches that contain the meaning of your keyword.
So even if additional words are included (before or after) in the sentence or phrase that a user is searching, your ad can still show for the search query. For example, if a user’s search term is:
- “Best photographer in Lagos” or
- “Photographers in Lagos with affordable pricing”
it can trigger your ads if you have the keyword:
- “Photographer in Lagos”
Phrase matching is less restrictive than exact matches in Google Ads. This means that Google could match search terms based on relevance plus searchers’ intent. So what a user is searching may not have to contain the order in which you have strung your keywords before your ad can appear. However, phrase match isn’t as open-ended as broad match.
When to Use Phrase Match
- When you want a balance between a broad and an exact match.
- If you want to reach more prospects/customers: Phrase match can help you expand your reach while you target quality traffic.
- When you want to test for new keywords: Since you can never be too sure of what people are searching to find your business, phrase match can help offer you a broader net than exact match.
Challenges of Phrase Match
- Potential for attracting less relevant traffic: Phrase match can still lead to irrelevant searches since close variants aren’t always close enough.
- The need to filter out irrelevant searches: there is a requirement for negative keyword adjustment, which can be time-consuming.
- Higher CPC than Broad Match: Since phrase match targets narrower queries, advertisers compete, which leads to higher bidding.
Final Thoughts
Keyword match types aren’t the problem when it comes to running an effective Google Ads campaign. All keyword match types have their strengths and weaknesses. The idea is to find what works and prevent what’s not working from happening.
Do not blindly follow generic advice that tells you about a particular keyword match type because the tech space is highly volatile. Rather, analyze data from your backend and optimize your campaign to suit your business goal.