Use Different Keyword Types for PPC Success
If you are doing pay-per-click (PPC) advertising as part of your website marketing strategy, are you using the different keyword variations? A lot of people out there are probably running their PPC keyword lists in a very inefficient way and this could greatly impact how much you’re making by advertising through the different PPC channels.

These basic principles apply to most of the PPC programs out there, but today I’ll talk specifically about Google AdWords. With Google AdWords there are 4 keyword match types that you can bid on. Different keyword match types will give you different listing results, so it’s very important that you understand the difference between them and how they can impact your PPC campaign. So here they are:

Broad Match
Sadly, this is the one match type that a lot of people are probably doing without even knowing it. If you just have the keyword phrase typed in normally on your keyword list, you’re doing a broad match. Let’s say for example that you’re bidding on the phrase apple ipod. Your ad will show up whenever a searcher types in apple ipod, blue apple ipod, i want an ipod that’s blue, etc. Any search phrase that has those two words in it will bring up your ad. Do you see this as a bad thing? It could but, but you’ll never know for sure unless you do some testing with some of the other match types to see which one is doing the best for you.

Phrase Match
To do a phrase match, you just have to put the keyword phrase inside of quotation marks. So sticking with our last example it would be “apple ipod”. With this match type your site will only show up when those two words are together. So in this example your ad would show up for apple ipod, blue apple ipod, but not for I want an ipod that’s blue because the two words are not together in the phrase. You’ll need to test this match types to see if they work for you or not as well.

Exact Match
To do an exact match, put the phrase inside square brackets like this: [apple ipod]. This will only allow your ad to show up on the exact phrase apple ipod. This is a third match type you’ll want to test out.

Negative Match
This is how you can exclude words from your keyword list. Maybe you don’t sell blue apple ipods. If so, then just add -blue to your list and you won’t show up for phrases with that word.

Does this information surprise you? Did you think you were doing exact matches when you were really doing broad matches? If so, you might want to go over to your AdWords account and make some changes to your keyword list and see how it affects things.

Also, when you have different keyword match types you can bid on them separately as well. So for example, you could bid $0.20 on the phrase [apple ipod] and $0.15 on “apple ipod” and $0.05 on apple ipod because AdWords will treat them as different keywords.

Experiment with the different types and see what gets you the best conversions. Remember, with PPC you don’t want to just be paying for traffic, we want to focus on those words that will actually perform the best. Website marketing is about getting your product or site in front of the right people, so make sure you’re using the most effective keywords and match types.

About the Author:
Dan Patterson has been involved in e-commerce and website marketing for several years. Check out his eComm Tips blog for more tips and hints on how to improve your online business.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Dan_Patterson

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