Broad Matches and Exact Matches

YoCrunch

New member
May 25, 2010
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S.Fla
I'm going after a group of keywords that have a decent amount of broad searches monthly (4k-15k) according to the google adwords tool. When I set it to only show exact matches it shows a significant dip in searches, now ranging from 300-1500 monthly.

I'm confident I can rank for the keywords themselves, but I'm not sure how well I'll be ranking on the broad matches. Will I be able to rank for the broad matches as well, or should I just scrap the website and move on?
 


The problem with broad matches is most of the time you really have no idea what they are searching for. For example you might trying to rank "doggie treats" for your bestdoggietreats.com site. lets say in this instance there's 200k broad seaches for "doggie treats" and when you get to exact there's only 700 per month. (this is not based on actual numbers) You could say, " That's ok, I'm confident I can rank for broader terms" and maybe you can if they all pertain to actual doggie treats but what if the majority of that search term is actually "my doggie treats me like shit"? Then you would have just based your decision to try to rank on a key term that won't have anything to do with your site.

Unless your pretty damn sure you think you know exactly what people are searching for when they're using your keyword phrases, it's always better to at least base your initial research on the either phrase or exact match. And if you want to play it safe then go with exact match each time.
 
If you're on a tight ad spend, stick with exact match.

If you have the budget, go broad and run your keyword reports. You'll see what people are searching for. Stick the popular queries into exact match groups and see if they convert. The ones that don't convert, neg 'em out in your campaigns.

Again, that's if you have the budget.
 
Thanks for your explanation, I'll take your advice and take out the keywords that could have nothingto do with my content. More opinions are always welcome :D

BTW- I'm trying to SEO the site, not promoting with PPC