It’s time for the next installment of our series on Pay Per Click advertising. If you followed the steps in part one (Introduction to Pay-Per-Click Advertising), you should now have a spreadsheet full of neatly ordered keywords and keyword phrases that you want to use to advertise your website.

So, what’s next?

Within Google AdWords, there are several different settings for keyword match types – these determine the searches for which your adverts are likely to appear, so it’s important to understand what they all do. They are:

Broad match
This is the default setting for all keywords, and means that your ads may be displayed if the search is made using any of your keywords or phrases, in any order or combination. Your ads may also be displayed for searches whose keywords are similar to those of your keywords on broad match.

Leaving all your keywords set to broad match is certainly quicker, and will cast the net wide. But you should be aware that it’s the least finely targeted setting, and because of that you may burn through your budget more quickly.

Here’s a little more from Google on how broad match works.

Phrase Match
Phrase match narrows the reach a little. Your ads may be displayed any time someone searches for the exact words of your keyword phrase, in the order you have them.

Here’s a little more from Google on Phrase Match.

Exact Match
Exact match basically does what it says on the tin. If you choose this match type, your ads will only apply when your exact keyword phrase is used in the search, without any other words in the search. It does narrow the field considerably, but the real benefit is that the people who are served your ads are the very people most likely to be interested in what you have to offer. Therefore, your money will be spent targeting the people most likely to part with their money in your direction!

Here’s a little more from Google on Exact Match.

Negative Match
It’s also possible to use a negative keywords to prevent your ads being shown for any search which includes certain undesirable terms, say, the word ‘free’ if you never offer your products or services for free and don’t want people just clicking through to you in hopes of a freebie

Here’s a little more from Google on Negative Match.

So which match type to choose?
Good question! You’ll need to play around with your campaign to figure out how to deliver the best results for your money, but a good place to start if you have only a limited advertising budget is to launch all of your keywords on exact match only. If in time you want to increase your traffic and you have the budget to play with, add a few phrase matches in and see how it goes. Similarly, if you find you’re getting loads of traffic but no sales via a few keywords, add them to your negative keywords list.

Hopefully that’s given you a bit of an overview of how some of the nuts and bolts work on AdWords. Next time, we’ll take a look at how to write your ad creative. Also coming up in the series: setting your bid price, your daily budget, tracking, launch and management. If there’s something specific you’d like us to include, drop us a line at blog@daily.co.uk and we’ll see what we can do.