The following excerpt is from Perry Marshall, Mike Rhodes and Bryan Todd’s book Ultimate Guide to Google AdWords. Buy it now from Amazon | Barnes & Noble | iTunes | IndieBound
When you’re ready to import your keyword list into Google AdWords, there’s an important step to consider. Skip this step, and you’ll burn through your budget in a matter of days, maybe even hours. Plus, your conversion rates will be pitiful.
The essential thing to remember is, we’re targeting buyers first and foremost. You’ve likely spent considerable time crafting your keyword list to focus on this group. But if you simply import those keywords into your ad groups as they are, you may unintentionally waste all your hard work.
Google provides matching options as a means to match your keywords with genuine, real-world searches. This process is entirely in your hands. Let me explain.
1. Broad match
If you don’t tell Google how and when to show your keywords, it will default to this setting and show your ads for any search it considers relevant. This could include searches that use your keywords in any order, or don’t even contain your keywords at all.
So if you enter your keyword into your list as
- formal shoes
With no punctuation or brackets, then Google could show your ads for any of these searches:
- What are formal shoes?
- Will formal shoes get me a better job?
- Buy shoes online
- Good work shoes
- Smart shoes for prom
Can you see the problem here? The first two are by informational searchers who are a long way from spending money. The next three searches are vague and will pull in people looking for products you don’t even stock.
The result? You’ll waste money on tire-kickers, or you’re going to get a very low clickthrough rate. If that happens, Google’s “Quality Score” rules kick in, which could make your PPC campaigns far more costly to operate.
This is one of the biggest pits new PPC operators fall into. It’s Google’s “Stupidity Tax.” Broad-match searches generally get lots of impressions—and it looks as if something good is happening—but their clickthrough rates and conversions are usually abysmal.
The solution is simple. Google lets you input your keywords with some simple punctuation that more specifically indicates what kinds of searches you want to show for.
2. Exact match
This option gives you total control. You’ll…
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