Keyword Match Types And When To Use Them

Keywords are the heart and soul of an online marketing campaign, and so you need to pay special attention to the ones you choose.

These are the four main keyword match types:

Note: Google has recently phased out Modified Broad Match so it is no longer a usable option.

• Broad match (max reach, min relevance)

• Phrase match (medium reach, medium relevance)

• Exact match (min reach, max relevance)

• Negative match (usually used to increase the relevance of the website visitors) 

Broad match

Broad match keywords enable you to reach the widest audience possible, letting you drive a larger volume of traffic to your website.

Broad match is the default match type used by Google Ads. If you add keywords just as they are (without special symbols such as [ ] and +), you need to be ready for Google to show your ads for a much wider range of search queries. 

Broad match type keywords have the most drawbacks of the three options: the traffic your website will receive won’t be refined; most visitors will be random individuals who stumbled across your ad; moreover, some of the keywords your ads will be shown for can be totally irrelevant to the theme or topic of your website or blog. 

Example Broad match keyword: women’s hats

Matching searches:

buy ladies hats

women’s clothing

women’s scarves

winter headwear for women

Phrase match

Phrase match keywords lie in between: they are more focused than broad match keywords but less so than exact ones. This does provide you with greater flexibility in terms of getting visitors to your website.

In phrase match keywords, additional words can be added either before or after, but not in the middle of the key phrase.

Example Phrase match keyword: “women’s hats”

Matching searches:

blue women’s hats

buy hats for women

ladies hats on sale

Exact match

Exact match keywords are the most specific of the keyword types. As the name clearly states, these keywords are based on exact search queries and terms, down (to almost) the last detail. The search query has to match the keyword exactly for the search engine to trigger your ad to show up. 

The probability of an exact match is low, so the traffic you get to your website will be lower than broad or phrase match keywords. To increase the volume of traffic, you will have to add more keywords to your campaign. But your chances of conversion are the highest, so even low traffic could boost your sales.

Exact match keyword: [women’s hats]

Matching searches:

women’s hats

ladies hats

hats for women

hats women

Negative match

Let’s suppose you sell interior paints. You will advertise your products for people looking for paints, finishes, enamels, water-based and oil-based paints, etc. But you don’t want your ads to show up for art paints - gouache, watercolor, tempera and so on.

Negative match keywords will solve this problem. With this keyword type, you can exclude your ads to show up for search terms that contain the word ‘art’.

Which keyword type should I use?

New Account - Start off with exact keywords, as they are the most precise and will get you the best cost per conversion right of the bat.

Established Accounts - With the rise of close-variant matching, phrase match has become less important. If the word order of your phrase is not important, you can ignore phrase match keywords.

You can expand your keyword search by using broad match in conjunction with In-Market and Affinity audiences. This will broaden your keyword search while ensuring you don’t receive irrelevant search terms. Audiences basically put a rope around broad match keywords to help keep them relevant. 

Large Accounts - Dynamic search ads are best for large accounts with large product lines and inventory.