Broad Match – Too Broad For Most

We get access to new accounts on a daily basis as we offer a free AdWords ‘health check’ audit on accounts where we take a look and make suggestions as to what would improve the performance. Sometimes there’s a few tweaks that would help, often there’s quite a lot and occasionally it’s very bad and there is a massive amount of work required.

Most PPC audits uncover a common theme, too many broad match keywords, none or too few negative keywords, poor adgroup themes with just too many keywords in too few adgroups, too many or too few adverts, adverts with poor adcopy and poor campaign setup/targeting and to a lesser degree a lack of conversion tracking.

Broad match keywords are the most common denominator we find. Google appears to be aiming to nudge everyone just to use broad match with no negative keywords but in reality broad match is too broad for most purposes as the keywords you have running may be showing your advert for vastly different searches. These supposedly relevant search terms in many cases just aren’t relevant at all for advertisers, you could be bidding on ‘shoe’ and showing for ‘trainer, boot or even slipper’. Google AdWords blog has another good example here :

e.g. for the broad match search term : low-carb diet plan

your advert could also be showing for :

carb-free foods
low-crab diets
low calorie recipes
Mediterranean diet plans
low-carbohydrate dietary program

If you were selling a low-carb diet plan then some search queries are more relevant than others here (low-calorie recipes and Mediterranean diet plans are a little scary, carb-free foods also not quite tight enough for our liking) and in order to find out which are working conversion tracking is a must when using broad match (although we consider it essential for all accounts). Running regular search query reports is a very important activity to get into the habit of running so you can identify new search terms to move into phrase and exact match or add as negatives (which can also be added in three different match types)

Broad Match Modifier keywords might be a better option to try to control the terms that your ads appear against if you are reticent to use more phrase and exact match keywords in order to limit the use of broad match keywords. Essentially broad match modifier also known as modified broad match keywords are generated by putting a plus sign ‘+’ before keywords, so in the example above it would be +low-carb +diet +plan and then the advert would only be triggered by search queries with at least all of these words in it. You can just leave your current broad match keywords running and then add modified broad match keywords to the same campaign but Google do advise that it’s wise to add broad match modifier keywords in a separate adgroup as it’s easier to see the impact and compare with existing broad match adgroups.

In closing broad match is a great tool for hunting for keywords but an account shouldn’t just be left on broad match, Google has a good range of tools to apply more specificity to the targeting of search queries such as modified broad match, phrase match, exact match as well as the broad negative, phrase match negative and exact match negative keywords. Running a Search query report and using that data in further breaking down the adgroups into tighter themes is a must to keep moving the account forward in a positive way.

Speak to an expert PPC Agency for more info!