Google Adwords has long been the starting point for many online advertisers. Due to its apparent ease of use and worldwide reach, Adwords offers small and large businesses a great way to get website traffic and, if done correctly, online sales.
In our experience, most small businesses that use Google Adwords don't spend enough time on their campaigns. Once the initial set up have been done and the traffic comes in, most businesses tend to leave it there. As long as they see their website traffic go up and money come out of their account, they are often quite content. By missing this ongoing management of their campaigns, businesses tend to overspend on phrases which do nothing for their business or even worse still, pay for irrelevant traffic.
Most novice or starter Adwords clients will only set up broad, or advanced, matching keyphrases due to not knowing the matching options available or having the time & inclination to set up multiple campaigns or adgroups. After all, broad matching saves time from having to set up lots of phrases doesn't it?
What most people don't realise is how broad the matching is on Google Adwords. Google says;
With broad match, the Google AdWords system automatically runs your ads on relevant variations of your keywords, even if these terms aren't in your keyword lists. Keyword variations can include synonyms, singular/plural forms, relevant variants of your keywords, and phrases containing your keywords
To illustrate this, I've taken some real life examples on what phrases we have set up for ourselves against the phrase that was not only matched by Google but was
actually clicked on by searchers.
Target phrase |
Phrase searched for & clicked |
web design ewell |
playforce |
website seo services |
google |
web design southampton |
fitted bedroom furniture hampshire |
web design southampton |
dick feet hampshire |
seo services |
classic furniture companies |
Perhaps one day we'll do as Google says and launch our own furniture collection... (image from www.kfb.co.uk)
Obviously since these phrases have been clicked on, we've gone through and set them (and others) up as negative words to stop them from showing again. It's only by going through our campaigns quickly and frequently that we manage to pick up theses erroneous phrases and therefore help improve keyphrase lists to show up more often or more targeted phrases.
If you do not currently manage your Google Adwords campaigns regularly, then here are our top three tips;
1. Keyword matching
Firstly, be very careful about which phrases you decide to set up on a board match. Broad match keywords and phrases will match to anything related to the phrase you have targeted and the other phrases in your campaign and on your website. If you are not using exact or broad matching on your high traffic phrases then make sure you review them to either set up new matches (you can set the same phrase as broad, phrase or exact) or remove them.
Remember, the whole point of using Adwords is to generate enquiries and sales, not to purely increase traffic.
2. Search query report
If you are using broad matching at the moment, make sure you run the 'Search query report'. This has only been around for a couple of years and is still often underused by in-house staff doing PPC. This report allows you to see the specific phrase the user clicked on against the phrase that you actually targeted (as shown above).
To get to the report, click on 'Client Reporting' then click on 'Create a New Report'. From the list of reports available, click on 'Search Query Performance' and then choose the relevant settings for your needs. Once the report is run, you'll get something like the example below and from this you'll be able to create a list of
negative words and phrases which you can set up to filter out your adverts to stop them showing for the wrong phrases again. If you have a newly launched campaign or one with a decent budget, then it might be an idea to set this report up so that it emails you the information directly to your inbox.
3. Regular monitoring
Make sure you log into your account on a regular basis. If you are spending over £100 a day, we would recommend this is done daily but if you are spending less than this then once a week or a couple of times a month is a good target to work to. Using broad matching might seem like a time saving option, but in a lot of cases it actually adds to the workload longer term as more time is spent generating lists of negative phrases.
If you need more help with your PPC and Adwords campaigns, please feel free to have a chat with one of our team. If you've got any of your own tips for better broad matching, please add them to the comments below.
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