Successfully implementing each of Google AdWords‘ different keyword types can be the difference maker in an effective search campaign. While every campaign doesn’t need to include every single keyword type, which includes broad match, broad match modifier, exact match and phrase match, integrating these keyword types will refine your campaign’s keywords to help ensure that each of the keywords that you’re bidding on are relevant and likely to lead to conversions.
However, a campaign that misuses these keyword types can be severely hindered. This can be due to a variety of reasons, mainly stemming from a keyword list that’s either too narrow or too broad. Avoid these common mistakes below to help maximize the potential for your search campaigns.
Using the Wrong Keyword Matches
You could potentially have the perfect list of keywords yet still fail to produce a successful campaign. This could be because you’re incorrectly setting these keywords as the right match. For instance, if you’re an SEO or AdWords representative for an urgent care center, and you have a campaign that’s designed to generate clicks for users without health insurance, having the keyword ‘urgent care insurance’ set as an exact match keyword (formatted as: [urgent care insurance]) would likely lead to few clicks. It should be formatted as [urgent care no insurance], which is an exact match keyword, which will generate exactly the type of clicks you’re hoping for.
Meanwhile, ‘urgent care insurance’, could be an effective phrase match keyword (“urgent care insurance”), as your ad could appear for search terms like ‘urgent care for people without health insurance’.
Having Your Keywords in the Wrong Ad Group
The danger with broad match keywords is that you’re giving Google the freedom to decide what search terms will trigger your ads. This could cause different ad groups to hinder each other’s progress. For example, if you’re running a search campaign for a lawyer that offers both divorce and estate planning services, with each service separated into a different ad group, but you’re bidding on the broad match keyword ‘property rights lawyer’ for your estate planning ad group, ads in your divorce ad group could still appear for property rights-related search terms. This would lead to a lower click through rate as potential customers may have been searching for a lawyer who could help produce a will, but instead, the user sees divorce lawyer ads.
Not Using Enough Negative Keywords
While too many negative keywords can ruin a campaign, not using enough keywords could inhibit the campaign by driving down its click-through-rate. Therefore, it’s imperative that you find the perfect balance by only adding negative keywords that will only prevent irrelevant search terms from triggering your ads. An example of a smart list of negative keywords would include a list of cities that are far away from your client’s shoe repair store. Therefore, if your shoe repair store is located in Porland, Maine, it would be smart to add “Oregon” as a negative keyword, as this would prevent searches for shoe repair in Portland, OR from making your ad show up.