I am loving the Google AdWords broad match modifier! If you aren’t using it yet in your AdWords account this blog post will help you to know why you should and get you going fast.
First, this is what Google AdWords says about broad match modifiers:
“The broad match modifier is an AdWords targeting feature that lets you create keywords which have greater reach than phrase match, and more control than broad match. Adding modified broad match keywords to your campaign can help you get more clicks and conversions at an attractive ROI, especially if you mainly use exact and phrase match keywords today.”
Here’s a link to the full information in the AdWords help center on broad match modifiers to help you understand them better.
For accounts that are getting too many impressions and a low click through rate use of broad match modifiers will better target your AdWords program and get a better result as well as improve your CTR. For accounts that have low impressions, as you are only using phrase match and exact match keywords, broad match modifiers will open up a whole new set of possibilities that can really generate some sales action for your account and increase targeted impressions.
Here’s how you use them. Suppose your keywords are built around booking vacations to Hawaii. In your AdWords account you may have a list of keywords like this:
Hawaii vacations
“Hawaii vacations”
Hawaii travel agent
“Hawaii travel agent”
hotels in Hawaii
With the broad match keywords you may be getting lots of “looky-lous” and clicks on even keywords like rentals or hostels in Hawaii. Or you may not be getting enough action or having to pay too high a price per click.
Here’s what a few broad match modifiers may look like for these keywords:
Hawaii +travel +agent
Hawaii +hotel +reserve
vacation +Hawaii +reservation
hotels +Hawaii +book
For me, I take the most important word in the phrase and put that first then I put a space and then a + (without a space) in front of the keywords that I am requiring for Google to have in the users search query to see my ad. With this approach you can get a lot more traffic that is targeted to keywords you consider important.