Broad match is one of the keyword matching options offered by Google AdWords. If you’re going to engage in pay-per-click (PPC) marketing, it’s important to understand how the various match types work. In this article, you’ll learn how broad match works, why it’s useful, and how best to use it in your PPC marketing campaigns.
What exactly is broad match, anyway?
Google and other search engines make decisions on which PPC ads to display in response to keyword searches based on keyword matching options, or match types. Broad match is the default option. It’s the most lenient of the options, meaning that it allows your ad to display in response to the greatest number of queries. According to Google:
If your ad group contained the keyword tennis shoes, your ad would be eligible to appear when a user’s search query contained tennis and shoes, in any order, and possibly along with other terms. Your ads could also show for singular/plural forms, synonyms, and other relevant variations. For example, your ad might show on tennis shoe or tennis sneakers.
Basically, this option lets you pick a term related to your business, and attempts to discover other terms that are also relevant.
The importance of broad match keywords
Your keywords are automatically set to the broad match option when you upload them to your AdWords account, so you should understand the impact of this setting.
The keyword you’ve selected will now automatically be matched against a broad array of related queries. This has two interesting ramifications:
- It helps you discover new, useful broad matched keywords – Broad match provides a host of new phrases that the search engines deem relevant to your business – often long-tail keyword phrases you wouldn’t be able to come up with on your own.
- You may be matched with completely irrelevant keywords – In addition to the good stuff this option will unearth, it will match your ad text to totally irrelevant terms. The search engines’ matching algorithms don’t always work perfectly, as anyone who’s ever gotten bad results from a Google search can attest.
So broad match simultaneously adds quality phrases to your PPC keyword list while spending some of your budget on unrelated clicks that won’t convert.
For example, if your broad-match keyword is “tennis shoe”, Google might match your ad to keywords such as “women’s tennis shoes,” “converse tennis shoes,” and “discount tennis shoes.” These all seem pretty good.
Unfortunately, because of the nature of broad match, Google may also display your ads against keywords like “dress shoes,” “basketball shoes,” and “tennis racquets.” This is known as “expanded broad match,” which means that the algorithm more aggressively matches your ads against what it deems relevant variations of your keywords.
But these variations may not be all that relevant. What if:
- We only sell tennis shoes – Dress shoes and other tennis equipment aren’t keywords we want our ad to show against, in that instance.
- We only sell tennis equipment – Again, we don’t want our ad showing against dress shoes and basketball shoes.
- We only sell shoes – We don’t want our ad to show for tennis equipment and rackets. Also, we won’t want our ad text and landing page talking about tennis shoes when our ad is appearing next to dress shoes.
However, if we choose a more restrictive matching option like exact match, we may miss out on valuable variations of tennis shoes, like “shoes for tennis” or specific brand names.
So we need to find a means for implementing broad match without wasting money on irrelevant clicks.
Getting the most out of the broad matching option
The only way to utilize the expanded reach of broad match while restricting that reach to only relevant queries is to implement negative keywords within your account. Setting a negative keyword tells search engines “Don’t show my ad against this query.”
The challenge with negative keywords is much the same as the challenge with regular keyword research: How do you find all the possible keywords and variations that you don’t want your ad to show against?
Here are your options when it comes to discovering negative keyword candidates:
- Generic negative keyword lists – This is a decent way to get started, but remember that generic negative keywords may not apply to your specific niche, and many negative keywords you should be using are likely to be missing.
- Through regular keyword research – When looking for relevant keywords, you can keep your eyes open for terms that aren’t relevant to your business.
- Search query reports – You can find negative keyword candidates by scanning your search query reports in AdWords for irrelevant terms that have matched against your ads. (This can be a slow process, of course, and will need to be repeated.)
- Organic log files – It’s also a good idea to look for irrelevant keywords in your organic log files or the keyword reports in your Web analytics. This is more proactive, since it allows you to catch wasteful keywords before they trigger your PPC ads.
- A negative keyword tool – Another proactive way to find negative keywords, a negative keyword tool (like this one from WordStream) works like a traditional keyword suggestion tool but helps you find potential negatives.
Using negative keywords in concert with the broad match option helps put your ads in front of the broadest possible audience of interested users, while ensuring that you only pay for relevant traffic that is likely to convert.
The broad match modifier
Google AdWords recently introduced a new feature, called the broad match modifier, that can also help you get more out of broad match. This feature allows you to define a middle ground between phrase match and broad match – in other words, it’s more restrictive than broad match, but still allows you to discover interesting long-tail variations on your keyword.
To use the broad match modifier, add a plus symbol (+) before one or more words in your keyword – this tells Google that the specified word or words must appear in the user’s search query. For example, if you put a plus sign before “tennis” in the keyword “tennis shoe,” only queries that include the word “tennis” will trigger your ad, though you may see traffic from keywords like “tennis equipment” or “tennis gear.”
Using this feature strategically in combination with negative keywords will help you take advantage of broad match without blowing your budget on useless clicks.
Tom Demers is the Director of Marketing with WordStream Internet Marketing Software. WordStream is a manufacturer of PPC management software and keyword research and organization tools for SEO.
