Learn AdWords | How to Target Keywords with AdWords
AdWords is powerful and AdWords can be tricky. There are two main concepts to be sure you understand when you are advertising through AdWords. The two concepts that you need to fully understand are the where and how. Read on to learn AdWords.
Understanding the Where of AdWords
Quite simply, when I refer to Where I mean where are your ads actually being displayed. You can determine placement and sites, even pages on sites, however first understand the Search vs. Content placements. When choosing the type of network you have the option of the Search Network, Content Network or both.
Having your advertisement display on the Search Network means it will be shown on the Google.com site or a partner site. Therefore you can further specify only Google’s site or also Google’s search partners. To understand the difference, if you were to search on Google.com that is the standard search. An example of a search partner is the Google search results appearing on another website such as the search box on the front of Longest.com, if you search using that search box (as an example for affiliate marketing) you will see the Google results and advertisements displayed within the Longest.com site.
Content Network is altogether another animal. When you choose to display on the content network your advertisement is no longer appearing when someone searches on your keyword. Instead, your advertisement is displayed on a website page that Google considers most relevant to your advertisement. You can choose to have your advertisements only displayed on specific sites within the Google Network, which can be very powerful. Even more powerful, is the ability to target a portion of a site, for example you may target the finance portion of a site. However remember the person is not searching for your keywords but your ad is instead displayed based on the content which is on the page the visitor is viewing. I am not suggesting it is bad, just keep that in mind when targeting and evaluating success.
Understand the How of AdWords
The How is very important and often misunderstood. By How I am referring to the keyword matching that Google performs when you enter keywords in their Search network. When you enter a keyword, for example let’s use two words together new car. There are three matching types you can choose: Broad, Phrase, or Exact. Each type of match is very different.
“Exact” Match : is just as it sounds. Your advertisement will only appear when someone types in your keywords and only those words. Using the new car example your advertisement appears when someone types in new car but not buy a new car nor buy new car today or buy new blue car. To implement, if you type these directly into AdWords within the browser you would use the brackets – such as [new show], or in the AdWords Editor simply choose the drop down for Match Type as Exact.
“Broad” Match : is the default. There are many ways your keywords new car would invoke the display of your advertisement. With the default Broad match your advertisement could be shown when only the words car or new appear in any order and with any other words. Searches with other words, plurals, words in any order, and many combinations exist, as your advertisement would be shown with cars new engine broken or buy a car with a new alternative fuel, you get the idea. And also, know that other words can be replaced if they are similar such as new automobile as automobile is very similar to car. To implement you do not need to add any punctuation with your keywords as Broad match is the default.
“Phrase” Match : is a way to assure your keywords must be searched for together, but unlike exact match you can have words before and after. And also unlike Broad match you will not have words replaced with similar words. Therefore you would have buy a new car or buy a new car today but not buy a car with new engine invoking your advertisement. To implement you would add quotes before and after your words such as “new car”, or in the AdWords Editor choose the Match type of Phrase.
What Difference Does This Make?
Knowing the How and Why of AdWords will allow you to better target your advertisements, obtain the level of traffic you want, track performance better if you split the types of networks and types of keyword matching into different campaigns, and most importantly make sure you do not waste your money. We hope this has helped you learn the basics of AdWords.
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