Using Advanced Organizational Techniques

When you have two or more keywords that can be triggered in your AdWords account from a search query, Google tries to show the most restrictive option. The constraints go beyond just match type to include geography, time of day, and so forth.

However, Google does not always show exact match over phrase match and phrase match over broad match. They also look at ad rank (max CPC x Quality Score), which we will cover in depth in Chapter 7. If you have an exact match term bid at $0.25 and the broad match bid at $1, Google will generally show the broad match term.

As an advertiser, you will likely find that your exact match converts higher than your phrase or broad match. You should control the ad serving so you know which ad copy and keyword will be displayed for any search query. You can control the ad serving through the use of bids or negative keywords.

There are several ways you can organize your match types within your paid search account. None of the strategies are better or worse than each other—they are just different. For each of these scenarios, we will assume you are using multiple match types for the same keyword and look at the pros and cons of each method.

Adding Multiple Match Types to the Same Ad Group

With this method, you add a keyword to an ad group multiple times, each with a different match type.

The pros of this method are that you have fewer total ad groups to create and optimize. This saves on both creation and management time. If you have a limited amount of time (and/or technology), this is by far the easiest method to use.

There are several cons to this method. With exact match, you can make a good guess as to the user intent of the word, so your ad can be specific to the keyword. With broad match, you know a lot less about the user intent, so you might write a more general ad copy that incorporates the keyword. This method does not allow you to write ads by match types.

The only way to control ad serving with this method is to make sure your exact match is the highest bid, your phrase match the second-highest bid, and then modified broad match. If your ad rank for your broad match trumps your exact match, your conversion rates and other data by match types become compromised.

While there are some negatives to this method, this is the method that is generally recommended for new advertisers because it is much simpler to create and manage than some of the other options available.

Restricting Match Types by Ad Group

With this method, each ad group will contain only one match type. If you want to advertise on both exact match and phrase match terms, you will have two different ad groups. In addition, for each of your ad groups you will use negative keywords to ensure the correct match type is being triggered. For instance, your phrase match ad group will contain exact match negatives of all the keywords.

There are a few advantages of this method. The first is that the proper keyword match type should be displayed in a search result. You do not have to ensure that your phrase match ad rank is higher than your exact match ad rank (however, it should be since the conversion rates for exact match should be higher than those for phrase match). This method also allows you to write ad copy by match type.

The biggest con is that your account can quickly be overwhelmed with too many ad groups to the point that you have to create new campaigns for all your ad groups because there are hard limits on how many ad groups can be within a single campaign. This method takes a lot longer to set up and a little bit longer to manage than grouping all the match types in a single ad group.

It is common to see this method employed where the long-tail keywords are grouped by match type into a single ad group, and then the higher-priced keywords or higher-volume keywords are broken down by match type into different ad groups.

Restricting Match Types by Campaign

Brands that are successful with AdWords often have a campaign just for their branded terms. This campaign is often one of the higher-budget campaigns because it has the best conversion rates and lowest cost per acquisition (CPA), the amount you pay to acquire a customer or lead. A natural extension of that same logic is that exact match keywords have the second-highest conversion rates and second-lowest CPAs for most brands. However, there is a limit to how much you can spend on exact match each month based on search volume. Therefore, you can put all your exact match keywords in a campaign with a budget to capture all of that search volume.

The next-highest conversion rates come from phrase match words. Group all your phrase match words into another campaign. Finally, have yet another campaign for modified broad match and broad match keywords. This last broad match campaign will use the last of the company’s budget.

If the budget gets increased, the broad match campaign’s budget is often increased. If the budget is being reached, lower the budget from the broad match campaign, which also has the lowest conversion rates of all the campaigns.

When you restrict match types by campaign, you also need to add negative keywords by match type at the campaign negative level (just like the method restricting match types by ad group) to ensure the proper keywords are being displayed.

The biggest pro to this account structure is that you can adjust both bids and budget by match types. This method also allows you to write ad copy for each match type and keyword organization.

The issue with this account structure is that you can quickly have too many campaigns. If you have multiple campaigns by match type, and each ad group only contains keywords of the same match type (which cause you to also need more campaigns), and you are doing geographic targeting or the content network, you can quickly become overwhelmed by too many campaigns.

Each campaign must also have a budget. If you slice your budget too thin, none of your campaigns will receive much traffic. In addition, this method takes more organizational and management time than the other structures. This method is not recommended for smaller budgets.