But after a while, you realise your PPC campaigns are not delivering the desired return on investment. You start making changes to bids, budgets, and keywords. Still no improvement, so you make more changes.

And so on.

It’s not long until you’ve lost track of what’s working and what’s not. Your keywords and ad groups become disorganised, your Quality Scores start to fall, and you start paying excessively high CPCs to chase after visitors and sales.

If any of this sounds familiar, perhaps you need to take a step back and review your campaign optimisation strategy. Are you making intelligent and informed decisions based on reliable, insightful, and unbiased data? Or are your bids being changed and keywords paused in a random and haphazard fashion in a drastic effort to improve results?

Below are 5 optimisation mistakes I’ve found myself guilty of from time to time, and some tips on how to avoid these common pitfalls.

1. Basing decisions on too little data

Data is a PPC advertiser’s best friend. Without knowing which keywords, ads, and landing pages perform better than other keywords, ads, and landing pages, it is almost impossible to create and maintain a profitable PPC campaign. But when assessing the performance of your campaigns, it’s all too easy to make uninformed changes to keyword bids and unnecessarily pause keywords and ads based on insignificant and unreliable data.

A keyword which has received 1 click and delivered 1 sale is not a high performing keyword. Similarly, a keyword which has received 50 clicks and delivered no sales is not a poor performing keyword.

Recommendations:

• 200 clicks is a good rule of thumb – it gives the keyword or ad a fair chance to show its true worth, and any freak anomalies are likely to be cancelled out over a decent-sized data set. So avoid writing off keywords and ads with less than 200 clicks
• Use larger data sets, but keep track of the time ranges used during your analyses (point 4)

2. Being too granular

Another common mistake is placing too much emphasis on the performance of individual keywords and individual ads, and failing to see the bigger picture. If you look at only keyword data, you will fail to spot how each of your ad groups and campaigns are performing.

Recommendations:

• If your individual keyword data is too small, look at your ad group data – you’re sure to uncover greater insights. And if you ad group data is too small, look at your campaign data.
• Same with ads. If you have the same ad messages across multiple ad groups, run a pivot table in Excel to benefit from a larger data set
• Try to only make optimisation changes when you have at least 200 clicks, so keep moving up a level until you have enough data set to make informed decisions – any changes you make will them be more likely to have a positive impact on your account performance.

3. Assuming that just because a keyword or search query has converted in the past, it will convert again in the future

Because it won’t. Well, not always anyway.

People make a wide range of unique searches, so just because you made a sale after someone searched for ‘cheap Bahamas deals summer 2012′, does not mean that bidding on the keyword ‘cheap Bahamas deals summer 2012′ will deliver another sale in the future.

Recommendations:

• Try to view your more obscure long-tail keywords as a whole, rather than individually
• Pick out themes from your search query reports to get more insightful understanding on what types of keywords and searches are working, rather than the individual searches and keywords

4. Optimising the same data twice

One of the easiest yet most dangerous mistakes to make when optimising campaigns regularly is to overlap your date ranges. You’ve selected data for the ‘last 30 days’, made your keyword bid changes, then carry out another bid optimisation 2 weeks later, again using the ‘last 30 days’ of data. Your bidding decisions will be based on overlapping data, so your changes will be made with poor judgement.

Similarly, if you’ve changed bids in the middle of the month, but then view data for the whole of the month, your CPC, CTR, and average position data will not be representative of the current state of the campaigns.

Recommendations:

• Record the date you make changes to your campaigns, and view data from that date onwards – it will then be more representative of the current state of the campaigns
• Download campaign statistics using AdWords Editor – when you come back to optimise your campaigns on a later date, you can see what date range was previously used and select a new date range from that date onwards
• Try to make routine changes such as bid adjustments at the same time each week or month, to get in the habit of selecting reliable date ranges (e.g. ‘last 7 days’)

5. Being afraid to walk away

There’s nothing more frustrating than investing huge amounts of time and effort into carrying out detailed analysis on your campaigns, only to find no findings whatsoever. After carefully compiling results to compare the profitability of prices versus non-prices in ads, or compare visitor engagement and returning visits of landing page A to landing page B, you secretly hope one proves to be a clear winner.

Really, you do.

But all too often, different ad messages and landing pages will perform exactly the same. When faced with such inconclusive and frustrating results, it’s often difficult to walk away and make absolutely no changes whatsoever to your campaigns. Despite the difficulty in doing so, walking away is essential to avoid making unnecessary and often detrimental changes to your campaigns.

Recommendations:

• Realise that making changes based on insignificant data can worsen your campaign performance
• Create two identical copies of each ad style within the same ad group, and let them rotate – only if both ads AA clearly beat both ads BB (or vice versa), can you be confident of a clear winner

Less is sometimes more

PPC campaign optimisation is an art. Especially when you want to include engagement metrics such as time on site and returning visits. Changes to keywords and ads should not be made haphazardly – they should only be made after careful thought and analysis, using reliable and significant data sets.

Not only does efficient and informed PPC optimisation require a good understanding of data analysis, but it also requires a good intuition and experience on when to make changes and when to walk away. Sometimes the best work you can do to a PPC campaign is to do no work at all.

What strategies do you find useful for optimising PPC campaigns? How do you ensure your optimisations are reliable and efficient? Share your comments and suggestions below.

Unfortunately, there is no definitive rule on the types of keywords which are relevant (which you should show your ads), and which are  not relevant (which you should avoid). After all, what’s relevant to a large advertiser may be irrelevant to a small niche advertiser. This lack of a boundary can make it extremely difficult to decide where to draw the line when researching possible keywords.

But as long as you consider the principle of keyword qualification, everything will be fine! If you understand how different keywords in your AdWords account naturally have different levels of qualification, keyword research and ad group organisation become a whole lot more effective.

Let’s see how.

Suppose you want to sell your luxury apartment in Melbourne. What keywords should you target? Perhaps you might want to show ads for the phrase ‘luxury apartments in Melbourne’? But people making this search might be looking for luxury rental apartments in Melbourne, and you’re obviously only concerned with apartment sales.

So you might want to instead target the phrase ‘luxury apartments for sale in Melbourne’. This would no doubt be a highly-relevant keyword, and surely deliver ideal visitors to your site. And you’d be right – the keyword is qualified on four separate counts:

• It contains the word ‘luxury’ – qualifying the visitor as looking for high-end property
• It contains the word ‘apartments’ – qualifying the visitor as looking for apartments rather than houses or offices
• It contains the words ‘for sale’ – qualifying the visitor as looking to purchase, rather than rent
• It contains the word ‘Melbourne’ – qualifying the visitor as looking for apartments in Melbourne, rather than Sydney

But highly-relevant as this keyword may be, search volume may be very limited. If you only target keywords which are fully-qualified by description, type, purchase intention, and location, you might as well give up hope of ever selling your luxury Melbourne apartment. Only 38 people searched for ‘luxury apartments for sale Melbourne’ in March 2011, so even with a strong click through rate (CTR) of 10%, you would only receive a handful of visitors to your site each month. There just isn’t the search volume to focus only on the most highly-qualified keywords.

So let’s get more visitors!

The Art of Qualification

In order to open up your property to a greater visitor base, you need to be less strict with your keyword qualification. While it is of course great to have only highly-qualified visitors clicking through to your site, to increase the reach of your property, you will also need to target slightly less-qualified keywords.

But while targeting these less-qualified keywords may increase your risk of getting irrelevant visitors to your site, this can be minimised by intelligent separation of different types of keywords.

To see how your keyword can be separated, let’s once again consider the multiple ways in which a property keyword can be qualified:

1. Description – the searcher has specified they are looking for ‘luxury’, ‘world class’, ‘spacious’, or ‘waterfront’, rather than ‘cheap’, ‘first home’ or ‘small’
2. Type – the searcher has specified they are looking for ‘apartments’, rather than ‘houses’, ‘land’, or ‘offices’
3. Purchase Intention – the searcher has specified ‘buy’, or ‘for sale’ in their search, rather than ‘rental’, ‘hire’, or ‘for party’
4. Location – the searcher has specified they are looking for property in ‘Melbourne’ or ‘St Kilda’ (a suburb of Melbourne), rather than ‘Paris’ or New York’

Your most highly-qualified keywords would contain all four qualifiers, such as:

• world class Melbourne apartments for sale (1234)
• buy waterfront apartment in Melbourne (1234)
• exclusive Melbourne apartment sales (1234)

But to increase the reach of your website, you might also want to target keywords which do not include a description qualifier, such as:

• Melbourne apartments for sale (234)
• buy Melbourne apartment online (234)
• apartments for sale in Melbourne (234)

Or keywords which don’t mention the words ‘for sale’:

• Melbourne waterfront apartments (124)
• luxury apartments in Melbourne (124)
• spacious Melbourne apartment units (124)

Heck, why not even target keywords which don’t mention a location. You could always geo-target your ads:

• world class apartments for sale (123)
• apartments for sale over $1 million (123)

But why stop there. We could also target even less-qualified keywords:

• luxury apartments (12)
• apartments for sale (23)
• apartments in Melbourne (24)

And if we really wanted traffic, we could take it even further:

• apartments (2)

As you can see, as we select keywords which are slightly less qualified, they become vaguer, and it becomes more difficult to determine the searcher’s requirements.

So where do you stop?

I would suggest somewhere before you start broad-matching to ‘apartments’, but it is entirely up to you. However far you decide to take your keyword research, what’s important is to keep different types of keywords separate.

The Art of Separation

Your keyword ‘waterfront Melbourne apartments for sale’ will no doubt perform extremely differently to your keyword ‘apartments for sale’ or ‘Melbourne apartments’. Of course it would! So why should you mix different types of keywords together?

You shouldn’t.

Keep your different types of keywords separate, and tag your ads group names based on their amount of qualification:

• 1234 | Waterfront | Apartments | for Sale | Melbourne
• 123 | Waterfront | Apartments | for Sale
• 124 | Waterfront | Apartments | Melbourne
• 12 | Waterfront | Apartments
• 234 | Apartments | for Sale | Melbourne
• 23 | Apartments | for Sale
• 24 | Apartments | Melbourne

By keeping your different qualified keywords separate, you can:

• Create different ads based on the qualification of the ad group’s keywords (if the keyword does not mention a location, then perhaps you should mention the location in your ads)
• Set different bids and budgets based on the level of keyword qualification (you might want to bid higher for highly-qualified 1234 keywords, and bid much lower for less-qualified 23 and 24 keywords)
• See at a glance how your different types of keywords are performing, and adjust your bids and budgets accordingly
• Have a logical pecking order depending on how your campaign is performing (your high-priority 1234 keywords might always be showing, with your low-priority 23 and 24 keywords turned on and off depending on desired visitor volume)
• Use negative keywords more intelligently depending on the ad group’s keyword qualification
• Have a clear keyword ad group organisation strategy to help with future keyword expansion

Since your highly-qualified keywords will no doubt perform very differently to your less-qualified keywords, it makes complete sense to keep them separate. Try researching and organising your keywords based on the amount of qualification they contain, and you see if your campaigns don’t improve.

How do you like to organise your keywords and ad groups? Please share your thoughts and experiences in the comments section below.

Alan Mitchell is an experienced Google AdWords consultant helping businesses in Australia improve their return on investment through best practice PPC techniques. To find out how strategic keyword qualification can benefit your business, get in touch today for a free consultation.

PPC advertisers have abided by this relevant approach since the dawn of PPC, knowing that to maximize PPC profitability, ads should be shown for highly-relevant keywords, and not for irrelevant keywords. If you are a synthetic grass manufacturer, for example, you should only show ads for highly-relevant searches such as ‘artificial grass’ and ‘synthetic grass suppliers’, but not for less relevant searches such as ‘real grass’ or ‘buy grass seed online’. Showing ads for these less relevant keywords would achieve a low conversion rate and yield a poor profit.

Or so the theory goes.

But maybe there is a way to still achieve great results from these less relevant keywords? Maybe there is a way to reach a greater number of potential customers, while still achieving a strong profitability?

There is. But it involves a different way of thinking. It involves a different approach to simply bidding on a range of keywords, showing your best performing ads, and waiting for the sales to come flooding in.

Capturing less relevant search traffic and achieving a good return on investment involves 3 crucial steps – separation, qualification, and persuasion.

1) Separation

“Keywords of differing levels of qualification should be separated into their own campaigns”

Start with your most relevant and highly-qualified keywords. These are your cream of the crop keywords in terms of relevancy. If you are selling luxury apartments in New York, for example, keywords in this highly relevant campaign may include a descriptive qualifier (e.g. ‘luxury’ or ‘exclusive’), a property qualifier (e.g. ‘apartments’ or ‘real estate’), a purchase qualifier (e.g. ‘for sale’ or ‘buy’), and a location qualifier (e.g. ‘New York’). People searching for ‘luxury apartment for sale in New York’ would be an extremely high quality of visitor, so these keywords must be kept separate in their own campaign.

In your next campaign, create keywords which are slightly less relevant. Keywords in this campaign might contain a descriptive qualifier (e.g. ‘luxury’ or ‘exclusive’), a property qualifier (e.g. ‘apartments’ or ‘real estate’), and a location qualifier (e.g. ‘New York’), but not a purchase qualifier (e.g. ‘for sale’ or ‘buy’). Keywords such as ‘world class property NYC’ is still relevant, but since it does not contain the words ‘for sale’ or ‘buy’, they need to be kept separate so they can optimized separately.

Next, create a campaign for keywords which do not contain a descriptive qualifier (e.g. ‘luxury’ or ‘exclusive’) not a purchase qualifier (e.g. ‘for sale’ or ‘buy’). Keywords such as ‘New York property for sale’ or ‘buy an apartment NY’ are still somewhat relevant, but since they don’t contain any descriptive or purchase qualifier, they need to be kept separate.

Then create yet another campaign for keywords with a descriptive qualifier (e.g. ‘luxury’ or ‘exclusive’) and a purchase qualifier (e.g. ‘for sale’ or buy’), but without a location qualifier (e.g. ‘New York’). This campaign will include keywords such as ‘exclusive apartments to buy’ or ‘prestigious real estate for sale’), which although are somewhat relevant, do not contain any mention of location so need to be kept separate. To increase the relevancy of keywords in this campaign, you might want to geo-target the campaign to a particular geographic area (e.g. searchers located in New York).

Keep creating campaigns, each with keywords of slightly less relevancy, until you start getting very generic and ambiguous keywords such as ‘New York apartments’. By now you should have a few different campaigns, each identifiable by the amount of qualification their keywords contain. Your campaigns may look something like the following:

• DESCRIPTIVE | PROPERTY | PURCHASE | LOCATION
• DESCRIPTIVE | PROPERTY | PURCHASE
• DESCRIPTIVE | PROPERTY | LOCATION
• PROPERTY | PURCHASE | LOCATION
• DESCRIPTIVE | PROPERTY
• PROPERTY | PURCHASE
• PROPERTY | LOCATION

As you move from one campaign to the next, keywords in your campaigns become less qualified and more ambiguous.

Now comes the exciting part – qualifying your ads.

2) Qualification

“Ad messages should be qualified to cater for different types of searchers”

While showing your best performing ads might work for your highly relevant keywords, using the same ads for less relevant keywords will have very different results. Using the same ‘tried and tested’ ads for less relevant keywords is a major reason why many PPC advertisers complain about the poor profitability of less relevant keywords. It’s not the keywords which are to blame; it’s the poorly qualified ads.

To achieve a strong return on investment from less relevant and more ambiguous keywords, such as ‘apartments in New York’, you need to qualify your ads. The less relevant your keyword, the more qualification is needed in your ads. When a user searches for something generic and ambiguous like ‘apartments in New York’, you are not able to tell whether she is looking to buy or rent an apartment in New York, nor are you able to determine the type of apartment they are seeking (whether it’s luxury, spacious, cheap etc). You therefore need to qualify your ad messages, providing clarity on the crucial missing information your searcher failed to include.

For your keywords which do not include a purchase qualifier (e.g. ‘buy’ or ‘for sale’), make it clear you are selling apartments (rather than renting apartments) by including words such as ‘buy’, ‘for sale’, ‘now selling’, or ‘from $3.5m’. When a searcher sees a price or a purchase qualifier in your ad, they will immediately know you are selling apartments (rather than renting apartments), which will reduce the number of rental seekers clicking on your ads.

Similarly, for your keywords which do not include a location qualifier, make your location extremely clear in your ad messages to minimize wasted clicks from people searching for properties in irrelevant locations. And for your keywords which do not contain a descriptive qualifier (e.g. ‘luxury’ or ‘world class’), ensure the searcher understands you are selling high-end property by using words such as ‘luxury’, ‘world class’, and ‘from $3.5m’ in your ads. This will help to filter out first time buyers or property seekers looking for low cost properties.

Qualifying your ads need not be a difficult task. One of the main reasons why you separated your keywords into different campaigns in step 1 is to make ad qualification all the more easier. By keeping keywords of differing levels of qualification spate, you should be able to quickly and easily create ad messages with the appropriate amount of message qualification.

Next comes the interesting part that is crucial to achieve profitability from less relevant keywords – persuasion.

3) Persuasion

“Ad messages should make it clear you are not offering the product or service the user has searched for, but provide clear messages as to why they should consider you as a substitute”

If you are an artificial grass manufacturer, for example, and you wanted to show ads for ‘real grass’ or ‘buy grass seed online’, you need to persuade searchers why they should change their mind and consider purchasing artificial grass instead. Messages such as ‘Grass that never needs watering’ or ‘Find out why you should go artificial’ might do the trick.

Similarly, if you’re a 4* hotel in Manhattan, New York, and want to reach people searching for hotels in the close by Midtown, New York, don’t just bid on the keyword ’4 star hotels midtown’ and show a generic Manhattan ad. Don’t just include the word ‘Midtown’ in your ads either, as that would mislead potential customers, and result in wasted clicks and few conversions. Mention the word ‘Midtown’ in your ad, but instead point out how far your hotel is away from Midtown. An ad such as the following would do nicely.

You’ve made it clear your hotel is not in Midtown, but clearly suggested why they should consider you anyway. You will filter out those people who must stay in Midtown, but encourage people who are flexible to consider your hotel. And since you’ve pre-qualified your ad messages, you’ve set their expectations at the right level which will help to deliver a strong conversion rate.

Relevancy Is Still King

While separation, qualification and persuasion can help to deliver strong profitability from slightly less relevant keywords, relevancy is still essential for paid search success. There is little point bidding on the keywords ‘apartment decorating’ or ‘the apartment film review’ to sell New York apartments, so keywords must still be somewhat relevant to your offering.

That said, if it’s approached intelligently, the three-pronged attack of separation, qualification, and persuasion should enable you to target less relevant keywords and still achieve a good return on investment. Separation allows you to keep your different keywords separate, qualification helps you reduce wasteful clicks, and persuasion helps you increase your conversion rate. Use all three strategies together, and they can be extremely powerful at increasing conversion volume within your cost budgets.

Are you a fan of the mid-tail? Have you found it possible to achieve a good return from slightly less relevant keywords? Share your thoughts and comments below.

Alan Mitchell is an experienced Google AdWords consultant helping businesses in Australia increase their return on investment from PPC marketing. For more information on how a strategic approach to PPC can benefit your business, get in touch today for a free consultation.

While this extra degree of control was largely welcomed by PPC advertisers, modified broad match no doubt adds an extra degree of complication to Google AdWords management. However, as we will see from four seperate modified broad match experiments, if modified broad match is used correctly, it can be extremely effective in significantly increasing click through rates (CTR) and lowering cost per click (CPC) prices of Google AdWords campaigns.

Infinite Matching Possibilities

Modified broad match isn’t just the fourth match type. Modified broad match is the infinite match type. Whereas previously it was only possible to match a keyword in three possible ways, with modified broad match it is now possible to potentially match a keyword an infinite number of ways. The only limit to the number of matching possibilities using modified broad match is the length of the keyword itself.

Say you wanted to bid on the keyword ‘cheap hotels melbourne’. Previously there were only three possible ways you could match this keyword – exact, phrase, and broad:

1. [cheap hotels melbourne] – exact match
2. “cheap hotels melbourne” – phrase match
3. cheap hotels melbourne – broad match

Now, with modified broad match, adding plus signs in front of certain words in your keyword forces those words to be included in the search query. As any word with a preceding plus sign must be included somewhere within the user’s search query, it is now possible to better control the relevancy of PPC traffic. However, this extra control means more possible customisation – there are now a 10 possible matching combinations for the keyword ‘cheap hotels melbourne’:

1. [cheap hotels melbourne] – exact match
2. “cheap hotels melbourne” – phrase match
3. cheap hotels melbourne – broad match
4. +cheap +hotels +melbourne – modified broad match
5. +cheap +hotels melbourne – modified broad match
6. +cheap hotels +melbourne – modified broad match
7. cheap +hotels +melbourne – modified broad match
8. +cheap hotels melbourne – modified broad match
9. cheap +hotels melbourne – modified broad match
10. cheap hotels +melbourne – modified broad match

That’s 10 possible matching combinations if the keyword has 3 words, 18 possible matching combinations if the keyword has 4 words, and 34 possible matching combinations if the keyword has 5 words. It doesn’t take long to realise that modified broad match creates a huge number of possible matching combinations – each which triggers its own unique range of search queries.

While these numerous matching possibilities no doubt add extra complication to Google AdWords management, if modified broad match is approached strategically it can be hugely effective in improving Google AdWords campaign performance. Over the course of 4 AdWords campaign experiments on modified broad match, we will see how modified broad match can lead to significant increases in click through rate, while at the same time significantly reducing cost per click prices.

Experiment 1 – Four Keywords

Firstly, let’s look at a small-scale test which was carried out on an AdWords account over the last 2 months. Below are results for a hotel name keyword (broad match), along with 3 modified broad match variations. Each of the 4 keyword combinations were given their own ad group, the same ads, and the same keyword bids. Over the 2 month test period, each keyword combination received over 200 clicks.

While quality score, average position and average cost per click prices were very similar for each of the combinations, click through rate and conversion rate were significantly higher for longer keywords and those with a greater degree of broad match modification. Click through rate rose from 1.36% to 2.99% to 3.81% to 4.65% as the keyword increased in broad match modification, while conversion rate similarly rose from 3.03% to 3.17% to 4.13% to 4.23%.

Although the experiment was on a small scale using only a handful of keywords, and there could potentially be multiple causes of uncontrolled bias which could have influenced the results, the findings strongly suggest that longer keywords with a higher degree of broad match modification achieve better results than shorter keywords with little or no broad match modification. Considering that longer, modified keywords are more specific in their nature, this is hardly surprising.

Experiment 2 – Multiple Keywords

To provide a more comprehensive analysis of the performance of modified broad match, modified broad match was rolled out across two separate test accounts. Again, the testing time period was just over 2 months, and each test account received over 2,000 clicks. While different keywords had different bids, largely due to their differing levels of competition, care was taken to ensure each match type variation of the same keyword had the same bid.

In test account 1, exact match performed significantly better than the other match types in terms of click through rate (CTR). Phrase, broad and modified broad match had similar click through rates, although average cost per click prices were much lower for phrase match keywords. Although there was little difference in CTR between broad and modified broad match, modified broad match had a 10% lower average cost per click, and a Quality Score comparable to exact match.

In test account 2, however, the story was much more conclusive. Exact match was this time the worst performing match type in terms of click through rate, while Quality Score of exact match was considerably lower than the other match types. Modified broad match had a higher click through rate than standard broad math, although average cost per click prices were slightly higher. However, once again, modified broad match boasted the highest Quality Score, suggesting that modified broad match keywords were perceived as highly relevant for the searches they triggered.

While both test accounts provided results which were largely promising for advocates of modified broad match, the differences in match type performance between the two accounts suggest a more investigative analysis is needed.

Experiment 3 – Amount of Modification in Keyword

In experiment 1 we found that although the sample size was small, keywords with more broad match modification tended to perform better than keywords with less broad match modification. To test the accuracy of this finding, keywords across the two test accounts were grouped according to the number of plus signs they contained. A keyword which contained 4 plus signs for example, meant that those 4 words must be included somewhere within the user’s search query.

Once again, account 1 provided little evidence that more broad match modification resulted in higher click through rates. Although click through rates increased for keywords with 4 or 5 modified words, click volume was significantly lower for these longer words, making it hard to provide a conclusive result. Cost per click (CPC) prices, however, were more conclusive, with CPC prices falling steadily as the amount of broad match modification increases.

In test account 2, not only did cost per click prices fall for keywords with more broad match modification, but click through rate showed a more convincing trend. Quality Scores remained relatively similar across all keyword groups.

Although the results reflect favourably on the use of modified broad match, with keywords having more plus signs generally performing better than those with less plus signs, the results do not take into account the number of words in the keywords which were not broad math modified.

Experiment 4 – Amount of Modification vs. Non-Modification in Keyword

To assess the performance of keywords with differing number of modified and non-modified words, keywords were grouped according to the number of words they contained vs. the number of which were modified. A keyword such as +cheap +hotels melbourne +4 +star, for example, contains 5 words, of which 4 words were broad match modified.

The results show that keywords with a high percentage of their words broad match modified had click through rates considerably higher than keywords where only a few (or none) of their words were broad match modified. While longer keywords also performed better than shorter keywords in terms of click through rate, as expected from long-tail theory, keywords with a higher number of broad match modified words tended to have a higher click through rate.

Similarly, keywords with a greater amount of broad match modification tended to have lower cost per click prices. Keywords with 0 or 1 plus sign were generally expensive while keywords with 3 or 4 plus signs were considerably cheaper.

Although Quality Score was higher for keywords containing a greater number of words, Quality Score remained relatively constant for keywords of varying broad match modification. Quality Score, however, was relatively high across all keywords, suggesting a strong degree of relevancy across the campaigns.

Conclusion

Although exact match was found to perform very well, modified broad match outperformed phrase match and standard broad match in both test accounts. Looking at keywords with different amounts of broad match modification, the results suggest that broad match modification can be incredibly useful in increasingly click through rates and reducing average cost per click prices for Google AdWords campaigns. While keywords containing a greater number of words will naturally tend to achieve higher click through rates and lower cost per click prices, as expected from long-tail theory, the findings suggest that incorporating modified broad match into your long-tail strategy can provide superior results on keywords of all word lengths.

While modified broad match presents a great opportunity for PPC advertisers to improve the performance of their campaigns, it also allows advertisers to increase their control over the types of search queries which match each of their keywords. If modified broad match is rolled out strategically and methodically, with highly-tailored ads closely matching the keywords in each ad group, there is no reason why modified broad match can’t be a stepping stone towards even greater results.

How have you found modified broad match? Did you see similar results in CTR and CPCs? Did modified broad match affect your conversion rates? Share your thoughts and experiences on modified broad match below.

Alan Mitchell is an experienced Google AdWords consultant helping businesses in Australia increase their return on investment from PPC marketing. For more information on how a strategic approach to modified broad match can benefit your business, get in touch today for a free consultation.

While exact and phrase match keywords are generally more controllable than broad match keywords, broad match can open up your business to a significant number of additional customers – those who might otherwise have been missed if only exact and phrase match keywords were used.

As we consider the pros and cons of each match type, we find that a balance is therefore required between the extra visitors broad match can deliver, and the quality of those extra visitors. In trying to find that balance, we consider a technique called the Broad Match Generator, which uses broad match search queries to generate new exact, phrase and negative keywords. We see how the methodical process of regularly analysing  search query data, to continually expand keyword lists and ad text relevancy (Broad Match Generation), can help take advantage of the opportunities of broad match while still delivering a strong return on investment.

Exact & Phrase Match

Exact and phrase match keywords are typically the most favourable for search marketers, as they allow a high degree of control over the words a searcher has to make in order for their ads to be shown. If your campaign contained the exact match keyword ‘flights to Melbourne’, for example, you can be 100% sure your ad would only appear when someone searches for ‘flights to Melbourne’ exactly.

Phrase match also gives you a high degree of control, and ensures that the words ‘flights to Melbourne’ must be included somewhere in the user’s search phrase. You can therefore be 100% sure you will only receive traffic from searches which include the phrase ‘flights to Melbourne’, such as ‘cheap flights to Melbourne’, ‘flights to Melbourne from Hong Kong’ or ‘low cost flights to Melbourne from China’.

So with exact and phrase match, you have a high degree of control over the search words which will trigger your ads. You can ensure your ads will only be shown on Google for highly-relevant potential customers.

Broad Match

Broad match, however, is not so controllable. Bid for the broad match keyword ‘flights to Melbourne’, for example, and you ads could be shown when someone searches for ‘flights from London to Melbourne’, ‘Melbourne flying club’ or ‘Australian travel deals’. Basically any search term Google believes is somewhat relevant to the keyword ‘flights to Melbourne’.

Not very controllable, you might think, and you’d be right. Why would you risk receiving visitors from people looking for ‘Melbourne flying lessons’, when you can be 100% sure what you’re getting by using exact and phrase matching?

Traffic, stupid!

Broad match isn’t all bad. In fact, it can be incredibly useful. According to Udi Manber, Google’s VP of engineering, 20-25% of search queries each day have never been made before, making it almost impossible to target every potential customer using just exact and phrase match keywords.

No amount of keyword research can predict that someone might search for phrases such as ‘flight prices March 2011 Tokyo to Melbourne’, ‘airlines Melbourne business class from NZ’ or ‘flights around the world via Melbourne’. Broad match can help deliver thousands of additional highly-targeted potential customers, who would otherwise have been missed if only exact and phrase match keywords were used.

So broad match allows you to receive high-quality visitors from search terms you may have missed during your initial keyword research.

But the problem of broad match still remains. Broad match can still send you visitors from hundreds of irrelevant terms such as ‘Melbourne flying lessons’. What a waste of money.

A balance is therefore needed between the benefit of extra visitors from broad match keywords, and the relevancy of those extra visitors. Introducing the Broad Match Generator…

The Broad Match Generator

Since exact and phrase match keywords provide the highest level of control, and allow advertisers to display highly-targeted ads, exact and phrase match searches should account for the bulk of clicks in a paid search campaign. Broad match should only be used as a catch all, to pick up those specific, seasonal and somewhat abstract long-tail searches which were not added as exact or phrase match keywords during your initial keyword research, and as a tool to generate new exact, phrase and negative match keywords.

To see how this Broad Match Generator would work, let’s first look at an example of an excellent user journey.

Example 1 – Exact Match Keyword in Account

Suppose someone searched for ‘flights to Italy from Melbourne’. Also suppose ‘flights to Italy from Melbourne’ exists as an exact match keyword in your Google AdWords account. So when a search is made, your exact match keyword ‘flights to Italy from Melbourne’ is triggered. Not only that, but since the keyword has its own ad group with its own tailored ads, your ad which appears will be highly-relevant and mention the words ‘flights’, ‘Melbourne’ and ‘Italy’, as well as current pricings for the trip. The visitor is then taken through to a landing page which shows details of flights to Italy from Melbourne.

Highly relevant, highly engaging, and likely to result in high click through rate (CTR), high Quality Score, low cost per click prices (CPCs), low bounce rate, high conversion rate and higher return on investment. Fantastic!

Example 2 – Exact Match Keyword not in Account (and search is relevant)

Now let’s see what would happen if a search is matched to one of your broad keywords.

Suppose the search is ‘flights Christmas 2010 to Melbourne’, and ‘flights Christmas 2010 to Melbourne’ is not is your Google AdWords account as an exact match keyword (ignore phrase match for the moment). The search is then matched to your broad keyword ‘Melbourne flights’, and the generic ad for ‘Melbourne flights’ is triggered. The visitor is then taken through to a generic landing page.

Somewhat relevant, you might think, but far from perfect. The searcher explicitly stated they were looking for flights at Christmas 2010, so why not show ads which better answers their question?

This is where the Generator comes in.

For any broad-matched search query, first decide if it is relevant. If it is relevant, then add the search as a new exact and phrase match keyword and give the keywords its own highly-targeted ads in its own ad group.

So the next time someone searches for ‘flights Christmas 2010 to Melbourne’, your ad which will appear will mention the words ‘flights’, ‘Christmas’, ’2010′ and ‘Melbourne’, and take visitors directly through to a Christmas 2010 Melbourne flight page.

Higher click through rate (CTR), higher Quality Score, lower cost per click prices (CPCs), lower bounce rate, higher conversion rate and higher return on investment.

Example 3 – Exact Match Keyword not in Account (and search is not relevant)

But what if the search query is not relevant, such as ‘Melbourne flying lessons’?

Again, this is easy. When you find a search query which is not relevant to your business, add it (and similar irrelevant searches such as ‘instructor’, ‘jobs’ and ‘careers’) as a negative keyword, to prevent it (and similar irrelevant searches) from triggering your ads again in the future.

The result will be reduced wastage, lower bounce rate, higher conversion rate and higher return on investment.

Two Simple Steps to Ultimate Broad Match Generation

The Broad Match Generation process is very simple. On a regular basis, simply look at each of the search queries that have matched to your broad-match keywords, and make one of two improvements:

1. If the broad-match search query is relevant, add the search query as exact and phrase match keywords in their own ad group, with their own tailored ads.
2. If the broad-match search query is not relevant, add the search query as a negative keyword.

Remember, even as you add new exact, phrase and negative keywords, your broad match keywords will continue to match to more and more search terms, so Broad Match Generation is an ongoing process. However, as you increase your number of exact and phrase match keywords, you should see broad match accounting for fewer and fewer of your visitors. A higher proportion of visitors coming through exact and phrase match keywords means you’re more in control of the types of visitors coming to your site and the ads they are shown, and is a sign that your Broad Match Generation is working.

If the Broad Match Generator is carried out regularly, broad match can be extremely effective in helping to target your ads to an increasing number of highly-qualified searchers, while at the same time reducing wastage from irrelevant and wasteful searches.

Broad match should never be used as a long-term ‘set and forget’ keyword targeting strategy; instead, it should only be used to generate new exact, phrase and negative match keywords, and improve the relevancy of your ads. It should only be used as a means to an end – that end being more exact, phrase and negative keywords and better relevancy.

Broad match keywords, left alone, should never be a long-term solution.

Opportunities

As we have seen, ongoing Broad Match Generation is a great way to make use of the extra traffic available through broad match, while at the same time providing a simple and practical means to continually improve the quality of your Google AdWords campaigns. It can help you uncover new seasonal trends and long-tail opportunities (such as ‘Christmas flights to Melbourne’ and ‘flight and hotel packages Melbourne Cup 2011′), and provide you with a great opportunity to provide highly-relevant ads, tailored to these new search terms.

What’s more, since there will also be some difference between your phrase match keywords and the search queries being matched to them, phrase match also presents another great opportunity for similar ongoing refinement. Looking at the searches being matched to your phrase match keywords, and adding new exact, phrase and negative keywords, as well as new tailored ads, can help take your Google AdWords campaigns even further.

And although Google’s recently-announced broad match modifier will help to give you more control over the types of searches being matched to your broad match keywords, ongoing Broad Match Generation will still be an incredibly powerful strategy – not only to help expand your list of long-tail keywords, but also to identify seasonal keywords trends and improve the relevancy of your ads.

Broad Match Generation provides a practical means to continually provide ever more specific and relevant ads to help better cater for the growing demands of searchers and better connect with your target audience. Use it to your advantage and watch how your return on investment from Google AdWords improves.

Alan Mitchell is an experienced Google AdWords consultant helping businesses in Australia increase their return on investment from PPC marketing. For more information on how the strategic use of exact, phrase and broad match can benefit your business, get in touch today for a free consultation.

Why? Because paid search relevancy can pay massive dividends. Not only is a highly relevant pay per click (PPC) campaign more likely to receive a higher click-through rate (CTR), higher Quality Score, higher ad rankings, lower costs per click (CPC) and benefit from less wasted spend, but users will more qualified so bounce rates are likely to fall (the number of people who immediately ‘bounce’ back), conversion rates increase and return on investment (ROI) will ultimately improve. So a highly relevant paid search campaign is definitely a good thing.

To achieve PPC relevancy, keywords, ads and landing pages need to work together in tandem. Messages in ads need to match users’ search queries, landing pages need to match messages in ads and landing pages need to relate to users’ original searches. (For a more detailed explanation of how each component interlinks, you might like to consult Acquisio’s great article on AdWords relevancy and Quality Score).

Closely matching ads and landing pages to keywords to encourage only targeted and qualified users to visit your site is a simple theory, and one that’s been around since the dawn of Google AdWords.

So nothing new then – does that mean relevancy is no longer relevant?

Well, not exactly, for two reasons…

Impossible to achieve

Firstly, relevancy can never be achieved in its perfect form. There will always be ways a PPC advertiser can improve his keyword selection, negative keyword list, match type strategy, ad copy matching and landing page selection to give the user a more engaging and personalised experience. Just like there will never be a 10.0 film on IMDB, there will never be a perfectly relevant PPC campaign. One can only strive towards perfection – towards the Holy Grail of relevancy.

Higher expectations

Secondly, the bar of relevancy is constantly being raised. As search engine continually improve their algorithms to provide users with more relevant organic search results, so paid search ads will have to improve to keep up with the growing expectations of searchers. Ads which might have been considered ‘quite relevant’ last year may be considered ‘not so relevant’ now. Ads which sufficiently answer the questions of searchers today may not do so next year when people start to demand a more personalized and tailored service.

So not only is the Holy Grail of relevancy (a perfectly relevant campaign) impossible to achieve, but it is getting more and more impossible to achieve as we speak.

But all is not lost. No-one expects perfection, after all. Just being better than the competition can reap massive benefits for advertisers. And as I’m about to point out, getting better than the competition doesn’t need to be difficult. There are opportunities everywhere.

Opportunities

Say you’re interested in visiting Sydney and want somewhere to stay. Load up Google, search for ‘Sydney hotels’ and look at the paid search results.

Of the 10 PPC ads, 9 mention the words ‘Sydney’ and ‘hotels’. Most of the ads are calling out to the user, “I have hotels in Sydney! Come to Me!” Most of the ads are relevant to your search.

But let’s say you know a little bit more about your Sydney hotel requirements. After all, you can’t be bothered clicking through each of the hundreds of paid search results (or the 22,900,000 organic results for that matter). Come to think of it, you are interested in going to Sydney next weekend, you your refine your search query.

Search for ‘weekend breaks in Sydney’ and look at the paid search results. Although most ads mention ‘Sydney’, not a single advertiser includes the words ‘weekend’ or ‘break’ in their ads. No-one is shouting out to the user, “Yes! I have weekend breaks in Sydney! Come to me!” Every ad appear to be a generic ‘Sydney Hotel’ ad that may or may not be relevant to your weekend requirements.

Suppose, instead, when searching for ‘weekend breaks in Sydney’, you saw one of the following ads:

Suppose they took you through to a special ‘weekend break’ page, specifically designed for people looking to stay at the hotel over the weekend. Along with suggestions of local Sydney sights, activities and restaurants that could easily be fitted in over a weekend were reviews from people staying at the hotel on Friday and Saturday nights.

Would you be more likely to consider this hotel in your plans? I know I might.

More opportunities

Okay, only 36 people searched for ‘weekend breaks in Sydney’ in June. But these were 36 people who knew what they were looking for and were delivered poor, generic, one-message-fits-all ads.

‘Weekend breaks in Sydney’ is just one example. Imagine all the hundreds of similar qualified searches people could make to find your products or services. 880 people searched for ‘Sydney CBD hotels’ in June, but most advertisers fail to mention ‘CBD’ or even their location in their ads. ‘Sydney hotels the rocks’ had 390 searches, but only one advertiser mentions the phrase ‘The Rocks’ in their ads. 73 people searched for ‘3 star hotels in Sydney’ but only a handful of advertisers mention ’3 star’ or ‘3*’ in their ads. These are people who know what they want are willing to part with their cash if they can find it.

It doesn’t take long to find hundreds of other examples of keywords that have significant search volume and are being poorly served. There are opportunities everywhere.

What’s more, as demand for better search results grows, people will start making more of these 3, 4, 5 and 6-word searches and expect better, relevant, more personalised results. The winners will be the advertisers who cater for them. The losers will be the ones who don’t.

So how do I go about improving the relevancy of my AdWords campaign?

Patience

I’m not going to pretend there is a quick overnight fix (because there isn’t). A highly relevant AdWords campaign takes patience, commitment and dedication.

Nor are there techniques that work for everyone. The whole purpose of this blog is to share with you the PPC techniques I have found to work in my experience, although I recognise they will be far from the be-all-and-end-all of paid search management so I welcome your ideas and comments. Paid search is an ongoing battle to become better and better, and it isn’t going to stop any time soon.

But to keep things nice and simple, here’s a quick 5 minute run-down of the essentials of creating a highly relevant PPC campaign:

Keyword Research

Research keywords that people are searching for. There are free tools out there, such as Google’s keyword tool, so use them. Build up a comprehensive keyword list. Not just with generic, high-volume keywords, such as ‘cheap Sydney hotels’, but also with long-tail keywords such as ‘cheap hotels in Sydney CBD’ and ‘cheap hotels Sydney Darling Harbour’. Long-tails can collectively be of significant volume and provide a great opportunity for tailored ads.

Then research negative keywords, lots of them. Why waste money on clicks you know are completely irrelevant? Use the keyword tool to identify keywords that might broad match to ‘cheap Sydney hotels’. Go through each result, making a note of anything you think is irrelevant. Is your Sydney hotel miles away from Sydney Airport? If so, add ‘airport’ as a negative keyword. Keep brainstorming negatives until you have at least a hundred.

Ad Group Structure

Once you have done your initial research, group your keywords into small, closely themed ad groups of generally no more than 20-30 keywords each. Write ad descriptions that are relevant to the ad group’s keywords and include the ad group’s keywords in your ads where possible. If you think you could write a more relevant ad for a keyword if the keyword was in its own ad group, split out that keyword into its own ad group and write a more relevant and tailored ad for it.

Think of the keyword as the question and the ad as the answer. Keep asking yourself, “If I searched for this keyword and saw this ad, is it answering my question?” If not, change it so it does.

Include offers and prices that are relevant to the keyword. In your ‘Sydney Hotels Christmas 2009′ ad group, how about mentioning Christmas 2009 prices or early booking discounts?

You’re trying to make your ads as relevant as possible to the user’s searches so think about how you could angle your products or services to appeal to users searching each of your keywords.

Next, deep-link your keywords to the most relevant page on your site. Don’t have a relevant landing page for a set of keywords? Write one.

Rinse and repeat until you have hundreds of ad groups, each with tailored ads and landing pages that match the keywords they contain.

Optimization

Then get optimising. Test new keywords. New ads. New landing pages. Two keywords in the same ad group getting a lot of volume? Split the two keywords out into separate ad groups and write new ads that better match those keywords.

Run search query reports to highlight searches your keywords have broad-matched and phrase-matched to. Are they relevant? If so, ad them as new keywords in new ad groups and write tailored ads for them. If not, add them as negative keywords to prevent your ads showing for them again.

It may seem like a lot of work but it’s worth it. With patience, your CTR will start to increase. So will your Quality Score. People will start to spend longer on your site and view more pages. Returning visitors will rise as people decide to come back. Conversion rates will grow and sales volume will increase.

The Holy Grail of relevancy is not something you can achieve overnight, or achieve at all for that matter. It is only something you can strive towards. PPC success favours the dedicated. So keep testing and optimising.

Alan Mitchell is an experienced Google AdWords consultant helping businesses in Australia increase their return on investment from PPC marketing. For more information on how a highly-relevant and tailored approach to PPC can benefit your business, get in touch today for a free consultation.