New To Adwords? Some Broad Match Advice

Posted by Dave Bird on October 11, 2009 · Leave a Comment

I just thought I would do a quick post to hopefully save some of the more inexperienced Adwordsers (good word eh!) a world of pain and probably a wallet/purse full of cash.

Today, I took over a new clients Adwords campaign which has been running for over 2 years. He owns a website related to the UK travel industry and has been dishing out a fairly significant monthly lump to drum up business.

Upon inspection, he had added ALL of his keyphrases as ‘broad match’ and had not used ANY negative keyterms.

This made me shudder.

Why?

Well, I spent some time delving into the reports of what he had actually been paying for and I reckon that upto half of his clicks were completely irrelevant to his desired market, not to mention his CTR which was abysmal for the same reason.

So, heres a little tip….

If you are not going to look at adding negative keywords ONLY use exact match (or in some rare cases phrase match). Do not leave it at Broad match just so Google can buy even more champagne for their Christmas party season. You may as well get your money and ask Northern Rock to look after it for you.

My client today has wasted thousands of pounds and severely punished his Adwords account through not thoroughly understanding the difference.