If you’re trying to improve your ranking in with Google, it’s important that you understand the differences between broad match modifier vs phrase match. It is helpful to equip yourself with a working understanding of PPC marketing. Understanding the differences will help you refine your SEO approach, and ultimately achieve better search rankings.

Phrase Match vs Broad Match Modifiers: Understanding the Differences

First, let’s clarify what phrase match, broad match and broad modified matches actually are.

Phrase Match

According to Google Adwords, a phrase match is a keyword setting that lets users find your content when their search includes either your exact keyword phrase or phrases that are a close variation of your keyword/keyword phrase.
This may include singular and plural forms, misspellings, abbreviations, and an extra word at either end of the phrase. For example, if you defined your main keyword phrase as “key lime pie,” your content would pop up in search results if someone searched for the following:

“key lime pie”
“key lime pie recipe”
“buy key lime pie”

See how the phrases are similar in all the above examples? Your content would show up in all three searches because the person conducted a phrase match search.

Broad Match

In broad matches, your content will be displayed when the search contains at least one of your defined keywords. Google uses a broad match option by default, and it will display results for any combination of words that make up your search term(s). It also returns results for slight variations on your search terms, like synonyms.

This might sound great in theory, but there’s a pretty major problem with it: a regular broad match can easily return irrelevant results. That’s where broad match modifiers come into play. Broad match modifiers ensure that your search queries return only results that exactly match the search phrases you’ve specified, or are close variants of them.

If there’s a plus sign in front of a search query you have ranked for, that’s a modified broad search. A search for cat toys formatted as “+cat toys” might also match:

“Cat food”
“Cat pics”
“Cat breeds”

The plus sign tells Google to make sure the word with the plus sign in front of it shows up in the search query, no matter what.

Phrase Match vs Broad Match Modifiers: The Pros and Cons

It’s important to note that each of the options outlined above has associated pros and cons. Before deciding to focus on one over the other, we highly recommend that you take some time to evaluate everything carefully since what you ultimately decide can – and probably will – have a very dramatic impact on the results of your SEO efforts moving forward.

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So, without further adieu, let’s take a look at the pros and cons of broad match modifier vs phrase match.

Phrase Matches

Pros – More control over individual search queries means better clickthrough rates and pageviews from more interested customers.

Cons – Takes longer to set up individual phrases, and you’ll have a smaller audience reach than broad search matches.

Broad Modified Match

Pros – More search volume than phrase match, and less time spent customizing your search phrases.

Cons – Less targeted results than phrase match, meaning you’ll have to constantly check your search results against your keywords to identify negative keywords (keywords that drive untargeted, irrelevant traffic).

Using Multiple Match Types for Target Keywords

Given that each keyword setting comes with its own pros and cons, it is best to use different match types to optimize ROI. Excluding things like budgets and some larger organizational items, there are a few reasons to use multiple match types for a given word:
-Bids
-Offer (the ads and landing page)
-View Quality Score (QS) of the actual word
-Impression share

While your modified broad match should capture most relevant queries, it might not always capture them (this is usually due to budget, rank, or QS of the actual query). By adding the keyword as an exact match, you can then set higher bids for an exact match than the modified broad words.
Look at the actual QS (you might have some queries for the same modified broad match word with a 3 QS and others that are a 10). By adding the exact match versions, you can get better insight into the QS by queries and also view your impression share for your exact match words to make sure you have high IS on your top exact match versions.
It’s usually a good idea to add exact match versions of your top keywords. If you’re using automated bidding (or can take the time to look at all the actual keywords), then adding the exact match version of all your words is a good idea. This is a question more of time vs. possibility when you start getting into adding exact match versions of words that only get 20-50 impressions a month.
Phrase match is a tough one these days since it often converts about the same as modified broad. If you have word ordering issues (contractor license and license contractor are two completely different items) then you need to use phrase match over modified broad.
If you’re using third-party bid technology and therefore have the time to bid on each match-type version, then it can be good to add. If you have a small- to mid-sized account with little technology powering it, then phrase match can often be skipped.

General Tips to Follow
In general, a broad modified match is a great option that will nab the most relevant hits and deliver fairly well-targeted traffic.

Phrase match doesn’t see as much use these days because it performs about as well as modified broad search, but modified broad search takes less effort. Targeting phrase match queries may not be a good choice if resources are tight. That said, if you’re getting low clickthrough rates and unwanted traffic with modified broad search and need to use something more specific, a phrase match is the way to go.

So keep the pros and cons of each method in mind, and don’t be afraid to mix and match as you see fit, according to your goals, needs, and resources. It’s ultimately going to be a judgment call on your part. If you keep these tips in mind, you should be well on your way to improving your search rankings.

I recently went through an article where the current modified use of keywords and ad group was mentioned, making me realize the bidding on keywords has now a whole different approach. Considering the fact that owning the keywords on a search engine which further displays your advertisement on a priority basis is the new revolution in marketing. The whole process is not as complex once you learn about it. There are numerous tools that can help you learn PPC, in case you’re just getting started. 

For various search campaigns, you have to select a group of keywords. You certainly can’t choose the same set of keywords for different search campaigns as they will end up competing against each other.  Hence, your keywords will only be utilized in one search campaign. That’s certainly a loss. To reuse it, you can change the topics for the same set of keywords in different display campaigns. But that is just one angle to it.

Let us see what else can be done to use the same set of keywords in different display campaigns:

As long as the keywords don’t compete against each other, it’s not an issue. Consider a scenario where your one of your campaign’s active in Middle East Asia and other in North America. You can use both your campaigns with the same keywords here as they do not compete.

Now let’s look at ad groups.  

Say you have the same keywords in various ad groups and each of your ad group has been mapped to a particular topic. If you consider using the same ad group across multiple campaigns, then it makes no sense. Also, if you are just ‘bidding’ then it is the same.

However, if you are doing ‘target and bid’ for the topic, then it brings out a whole different picture. A keyword’s primary purpose is mostly targeting an advertisement so when you do ‘target and bid’  your keywords won’t  compete against each other, solving your problem.

The other option is ‘bid only’. It is for topics and keywords. However,  it will lead your keywords to compete against each other because you are only using topics to change the bid and not to target an ad.

There happens to be an option that will serve all purposes. Multiple ‘bid only’ topics with a keyword. By doing this, you can put all topics in one ad group and do your bidding on topics. Now if you do ‘target and bid’ on these topics then you are free to put the same keywords in multiple ad groups and target these topics to a particular ad. The next time you have to change the keywords,  you don’t have to worry about targeting ads because it has already been done by your ad group and its topic.

Below are some examples and suggestions that will eventually help you in bidding on the right keyword and topic.

1. Making Ad groups for keywords: Generating a list of keywords won’t help in the advertisement. The trick is to make particular groups out of these long tail keywords. All relevant keywords in one group and so on will not just provide you a better visibility but also frequent searches. Effectively grouping keywords are essential. For Example:

The organization of keywords in the above example is one way to use  your keywords more efficiently.

 

2. Finding keywords from recent searches: There are many tools available online which will give you the exact keywords that people have been frequently looked for in the search engine. Look at the example in the below picture:

In the above image, we can see the keywords that are hit by users all around the globe on the search engine. It is now easier for you to find the right keyword and group them accordingly.

According to the latest data released by experts, the top three paid keyword ads on Google gets 41% of the clicks. 41% is not a small thing. In fact, even 10 % is not if we are considering the ROI received on these keyword advertisements. A study shows that you can earn 43% more than your initial investment in bidding for keywords. The chart below will help you get a better understanding of the same:

Click through rate:

The click through rate is more like a benefit that you get along with your keyword search. Google’s AdWords provide this unique feature to help monitor  data you run for your ads and keywords. It tracks the clicks and gives you a click through rate for your keywords. Judging by the name we can say that CTR is nothing but the percentage of clicks that people did once they saw your ad. Below is the example screen of Google’s AdWords that shows the CTR calculation of a keyword and its ad:

To understand it in a better way let me take you through a case study in which the primary goal was the lead generation for people buying Audi cars.

The campaign had the below results:

1. 92606 keywords
2. 1059 converting search queries
3. 161 queries with 2+ conversion
4. Top 20 queries

Now the main task was to find the most suitable keywords from the above data for which top performing queries were taken into consideration. These keywords are then placed in single ad groups. This resulted in two major ad groups i.e.

1. Audi – Search- General
2. Audi – Search – Specific models

Below is the listing and their clicks:

Now the top performing keywords from these ad groups are put into one.  Then you need to exclude them from their previous ad groups. The results that came out with this approach were amazing with this approach. There was a 22% increment in the previous Click through rate. Along with that, the cost per action was also reduced to half.

The above case study is a very nice example of how we can do more testing and find out the meaningful data from which impactful keywords can be extracted. In the end, your keywords are the key to your ad’s success. Choose them wisely.

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