Broad Match vs. Exact Match: What’s a good starting point for paid search?
So the other day, I was having a meeting with a client and there happened to be another agency in the room. We began talking about paid search strategies in terms of whether to start with broad match keywords or exact match or a mix of the two. I can come up with reasoning for both, but it just depends on the situation.
When is it best to start with broad match?
I would equate broad match as the sledgehammer of keyword matching tools. It’ll definitely get the job done, but you might also bring in lots of impressions which aren’t necessarily applicable. Now, if you are new to paid search or just starting off a paid search campaign, this is a good place to start. If you have the budget flexibility, it might be good to just let a broad match campaign run for a short time frame, depending on volume, and then review the campaign analytics to see which words to add to your negative keyword list. So let’s say you have a campaign running for a local car wash, you might advertise against:
- car wash
- car washes
- car washing
Well, since search engines don’t report what other keywords your ad was displayed for, you have to look at the site analytics to see what words to filter out. You might discover that you want to filter out words like “equipment” or “movie” or dare I say, “bikini”, as they are driving traffic, but not relevant traffic and certainly not traffic interested in your business. Now this only applies if you (the marketer or marketing agency) can get access to the analytics. If you can’t get access, you might want to consider more targeted matching tools, like exact matching.
When is it best to start with exact match?
Now, exact matching is the scalpel of keyword matching tools. You’re going to get target exactly the right amount of keywords, but nothing more. I find that it’s almost too precise, if that’s possible. If we use our example above for the local car wash. If someone searches for “car wash”, our ad will appear, but if they search for “local car wash”, our ad will not. So if you were to use all exact matching, it would probably blow out your keyword list so that you have to include every conjugation, tense, singular and plural versions and numerous other versions of your keyword list: “local car wash”, “local car washing”, “neighborhood car washes”, “chicago car wash”, etc. etc. etc.. Now, if you are in a highly sensitive industry, such as finance, regulatory, or legal this may be extremely important. What if you are advertising against the broad match phrase “legal representation” and someone searches for “pro bono legal representation”? That’s a whole different ballgame in terms of your compensation structure. And if you have an extremely restricted budget, you might want to try exact match to get started and move up to broad match from there. And lastly, if you have no access to analytics, there’s no way to know how your ads are performing, beyond impressions, CPC, and click through rate. So in order to ensure you are providing internal or external clients the value they deserve, you might want to start with exact match. In this manner, you can be 100% sure of the keywords where your ad is displayed – not a penny more, not a penny less.
When is it best to start with both broad match and exact match?
Well, I don’t know that I’d ever suggest starting with both if you are new to the paid search game, but after a while you kind of get the hang of these things and you can get more advanced. And the more you begin to know about the content area, the more data you can get ahold of, and the more time you spend in that industry, the more savvy you will become about the subject matter and the way in which people refer to things online in your industry.
What about phrase matching?
So, I didn’t cover phrase matching as it’s one of those gray areas that I know a lot of search marketers only partially use. It’s kind of like broad matching and it’s kind of like exact matching, but in general, it can be more trouble than it’s worth. In general, I haven’t had a client that this performed better for them than using either broad, or exact, or a combination of the two, but I’m willing to listen if others have good experiences with or a case for when to use phrase matching as opposed to board or exact.
Anything I forgot? Have any other questions? Let me know if the comments.
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Nice post, like your analogy of sledgehammer and scalpel.
I would agree that broad match may be more suitable for beginners and exact and phrase match should be used ones you become familiar with the system.
I tend to use all three match types together, and run search query reports to identify any irrelevant keywords that could be added as negatives. I guess the key is to make sure every keyword you bid on is relevant to your business.
I usually start with exact, and then incorporate phrase and broad later. This seems to keep my qc up.