A Quick Way to Cut Down PPC Advertising Cost
Tags: cost management, Pay Per Click (PPC), ppc
When running a Pay Per Click (PPC) campaign, it’s nice to have keywords in different match types. The same keywords with different match types can a lot of times vary in performance. Sometimes when creating keywords for a campaign, the more advanced users will just prep the keyword list in an excel sheet and duplicate the list 3 times for broad, phrase and exact match.
This method definitely saves time and is good at capturing pretty much most of the searches. But one thing to watch out for is whether or not you have a single-word keyword phrase that is in broad match in your keyword list. In Google, a single-word keyword phrase that’s in broad match should essentially behave the same way as a single-word keyword phrase that’s in phrase match. I am not going to talk in detail about how each match type works. For details on that, click here. But because Google introduced expanded broad match, a single-word keyword phrase in broad can end up showing up for search queries that has absolutely no relevance to what you are aiming for, therefore either decreases your CTR or worse, wastes your advertising budget.
By pausing all the single-word keyword phrases that are in broad match can save you tons of money, and don’t worry about being losing valuable impression, the phrase match version of those keywords will work just fine.
Stupidscript said:
Nov 03, 09 at 4:35 pmTo some extent, you are correct in saying that pausing (or removing) all single-word Broad match terms from your account can save you tons of money … but you are leaving out a very, very important fact about Google and its use of Broad match terms:
ANY single word in ANY Broad match term is a candidate for a Broad match on ANY query that is even remotely similar. EVERY word in ANY Broad match term is a candidate for a match. For example:
Broad match term: red tennis shoes
Matching Queries:
find a tennis pro (matches “tennis”)
where’s the baseball game (matches “tennis” with a sport synonym)
red face (matches “red”)
orange baseball cleats (synonyms for “red” “tennis” and “shoes”)
“that guys who threw his shoes at Bush” (matches “shoes”)
…etc…
And those matches will DEFINITELY cost you money from clicks by “window shoppers” … searchers who see your ad and click it even though they did not search for it, just to see what you have.
EVERY Broad match term is ripe for abuse. As such, EVERY Broad match term will contribute to lower Quality Scores, campaign-wide. In addition, EVERY Broad match term will be triggered before ANY Phrase match term, until the Broad match campaigns hit their Daily Budget for the day.
In addition, Exact matches that overlap with Phrase match AdGroups geographically (i.e. Exact = national, Phrase = state) will prevent those Phrase matches from displaying, because of the “one ad per advertiser per query” extremely loose rule. (I say “extremely loose” because I think all of us have witnessed a single advertiser hiding behind management agencies and affiliates to get more than one of their ads to display for a single query.)
So while it USED to be that having duplicate terms in all three match types would help manage your spend by costing less for Phrase than for Exact, and even less for Broad, this is no longer the case, and accounts with all three match types are now working against themselves to cost the advertiser more than they would have paid, several months ago.
The proper way to approach AdWords now is to plan your campaigns so there is NO overlap, geographically, between match types, and to avoid the use of Broad match ENTIRELY except in VERY rare instances when an Exact or Phrase term cannot do the job, and ONLY when NO PART of the Broad term is included in ANY other term.
Anonymous said:
Nov 18, 09 at 9:39 pmQuick Way to Cut Down PPC Advertising Cost…
When running a Pay Per Click (PPC) campaign, it’s nice to have keywords in different match types….
Info said:
Nov 22, 09 at 10:39 pmWhat will happen when a single word is put in phrase match?
For example “shoe”
Will this keyword act like a broad match keyword?
Tomatoa said:
Nov 23, 09 at 12:20 pmIt won’t act exactly like a broad match keyword, but that’s the whole purpose of switching it to phrase match. Instead of showing up for all sorts of broad search queries such as: boots, sandals, high heels, etc, you will only show up for search queries that has “shoe” in it. But you should always include a plural version of your phrase match keywords, for example, shoes.
Info said:
Nov 24, 09 at 3:43 amThat is great.
But will it trigger the ad for a search query like
shoe sting
:)
Info said:
Nov 24, 09 at 3:45 amshoe string
Tomatoa said:
Nov 24, 09 at 2:18 pmYes, it will trigger shoe string.