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Part III of III

Already in our in our Google AdWords mini-series, we have covered Google AdWords Terms to Know and Google AdWords Basics. In our final post of the series, Part III will review two essential aspects of Google AdWords planning – keywords and ad ranking. For more information on Google AdWords and the topics below, visit the AdWords Beginner’s Guide.

Google AdWords – Keywords & Ad Rank:

• Keywords: The keywords you choose are the terms or phrases you want to prompt your ad to appear. For example, if you bake apple pies, you can use “apple pie bakery” as a keyword in your AdWords campaign. When a Google user enters “apple pie bakery” in a Google search, your ad could appear next to the search results.
  • You can specify how closely you want search inquiry to match…
    • Broad match: Allows your ad to show on similar phrases and relevant variations of the keyword. This is the default option. If your ad group contained the keyword ‘tennis shoes,’ your ad would be eligible to appear when a user’s search query contained either or both words (‘tennis’ and ‘shoes’) in any order, and possibly along with other terms. Your ads could also show for singular/plural forms, synonyms, and other relevant variations.
    • Phrase match: Allows your ad to show for searches that include the exact phrase of the keyword. If you enter your keyword in quotation marks, as in “tennis shoes,” your ad would be eligible to appear when a user searches on the phrase tennis shoes, with the words in that order. It can also appear for searches that contain other terms as long as it includes the exact phrase you’ve specified. Phrase match is more targeted than broad match, but more flexible than exact match.
    • Exact match: Allows your ad to show for searches that match the exact phrase exclusively. If you surround your keywords in brackets — such as [tennis shoes] — your ad would be eligible to appear when a user searches for the specific phrase ‘tennis shoes,’ in this order, and without any other terms in the query. You likely won’t receive as many impressions, clicks, or conversions with exact match as you would with broad match. However, if you’ve carefully constructed a comprehensive keyword list, the traffic you do receive may be more targeted to your product or service.
• Ad rank: a combination or your bid and Google’s relevancy metric called Quality Score determines your ad rank
  • Quality Score – how useful AdWords believes users will find your ad when its triggered by the keyword
    • Calculated every time your bid matches a search inquiry
    • A formula that varies based on your bid type, where your ad is showing, and targeting type
    • Because Quality Score measures relevancy, a high Quality Score generally means that your ads will appear in a higher position and at a lower cost-per-click (CPC). In other words, AdWords rewards well-targeted, relevant ads. Having relevant keywords and ad text, a strong clickthrough rate (CTR) on Google, and a high CPC bid will result in a higher position for your ad.

To return to Part II of this series, click Google AdWords – The Basics.