MindValley Labs Internet Marketing Blog

Pow­er­ful key­word match­ing tips:

I am work­ing on a new AdWords Opti­mizer and one of the mod­ules I am devel­op­ing is around key­word match­ing.  I have noticed that MOST begin­ning AdWords users do not use key­word match­ing cor­rectly so I wanted to come up with some sim­ple tips and rules to follow.

While there are many ways to use key­word match­ing, I hope you may find these tips useful.

Key­word match­ing and new Ad Groups:

When­ever you launch a new Ad Group I rec­om­mend the following:

* First two weeks - only use exact matching

Why?  To dom­i­nate in AdWords, you need to get into the top posi­tions and when you start with exact match only you can ensure to write more tar­geted ads and get a higher click-through-rate.  This in turn will boost your Qual­ity Score which will help you vs. all the other adver­tis­ers that are com­pet­ing for the same keyword.

* Week 2–4 - expand to phrase matching

Why? Same rea­sons as above.  I like to start out bid­ding WAY high for my key­words to show Google who is the man and then grad­u­ally lower my bids.  This will ensure that I get a very high CTR to start out with and I can then grad­u­ally lower it with­out los­ing my posi­tion.  How­ever, such a start­egy is VERY costly, which is why I only rec­om­mend using it on a lim­ited basis and start­ing with exact match and then mov­ing to phrase match is highly recommended.

* Week 4+ — expand to broad match

Per­son­ally, I LOVE broad match­ing because it can give you A LOT of traf­fic.  How­ever, it is also very dan­ger­ous because it can give you A LOT of traf­fic that does not con­vert.  So, I would rec­om­mend the following. 

a. Lower your max. cpc for broad match­ing due to the expected lower con­ver­sion rate.
b. NEVER use broad match­ing in an Ad Group that does not have neg­a­tive keywords

Broad match­ing is pow­er­ful but you MUST pro­tect your­self from bid­ding for key­words that are not tar­geted.  How to find them will be a sub­ject of another post.

Lastly, once an Ad Group has been run­ning for more than a month, I usu­ally have all three key­word match­ing options enabled across all key­words in my Ad Group and I just adjust the bid prices at the key­word level to max­i­mize my ROI.

Last 5 posts by

• Do you think SEO in other lan­guages is eas­ier? — Sep­tem­ber 18th, 2008
• Google Slap — How to recover from a Google Slap? — Sep­tem­ber 8th, 2008
• What Does Your Order But­ton Say? — August 29th, 2008
• Will Knol Rule The Search Engines? First Analy­sis Indicates…It Just Might — July 23rd, 2008
• Are small busi­nesses drop­ping out of AdWords? — July 23rd, 2008

About the Author

Prior to MindValley Media, Mike was the Head of New Ventures Strategy at eBay where he conceived of the strategies that led to the investment in Craigslist, the launch of Kijiji.com and the acquisition of Skype. Mike has an MBA from Stanford and previously worked for the Boston Consulting Group. He is also a certified Google AdWords Professional.

Check out other posts by Mike Reining

If you want to see what's in the private lab...

Ask yourself... which part of your business would you most like to improve?

I can send you 7 tactics related to your specific needs, if you like.

You don't have to buy anything, just take it as a backstage pass into our private course.

Will it give you the solution you've been waiting for?

There's only one way to find out.