Stop Using Google Ads Phrase Match Targeting

you need to stop using phrase match keyword targeting for your Google search campaigns right now I actually hate to say this and the reason for that is because phrase match targeting used to be my go-to and favorite type of keyword match types in Google ads before 2021 but right now I do not use phrase match targeting anymore and it's for two big reasons so in this video I'm going to take you through the two reasons for why I do not use phrase match keyword Target in Google ads campaigns and I'm also going to break down

the strategy that I'm using which is combining broad match and exact match keywords together now before this video gets absolutely inundated with people making their own comments about that why you should never use broad match keywords because I know that is going to happen I want to firstly explain and put some extra context to where I'm coming from because if you're like me where you've been doing Google ads you know pre 2021 you would find it very very hard to find people to give the recommendation to use broad match targeting unless you're going for a

really wide branded or visibility campaign it was just the keyword type that I never really used and trust me it took a while to get my head around this and test it out in different campaigns and different scenarios and part of the reason why I was so skeptical of this is because Google was recommending broad match so heavily and I'll be honest the previous track record of Google recommending things is if you were to follow all of Google's recommendations you would generally see your costs increase with no more conversions to show for it so a

general good practice was to just stay away from Google's recommendations and everything in your account would be okay so for me and I would say for a lot of people there is that because if Google recommends something it doesn't mean that it is a good thing but as I said in this case the overwhelming data and as I said I've seen this across multiple accounts across hundreds of thousands of dollars in ad spend and I'm seeing this strategy Stack Up time and time again but before we get to that strategy as I said I need

to take you through the really two big reasons for why I don't use phrase match anymore and the first reason is is because phras match targeting just doesn't work anymore and the best way for me to show this is for us to jump into a screen share so I can show you some live data accounts so what I'm showing you in here is a search Campaign which has set up its keywords across different ad groups and they're all set to phrase match targeting so there's only one type of keyword match targeting being phrase match and

what I want to show you is but when we go over into the search term so looking at what people have actually searched what you can see here straight away is that there you know you got different brand you've got different competitive Brands you've got howto Searchers once again some other howto Searchers so all of these are Search terms which you would usually associate to a non-targeted non-relevant Search terms from when Google ads first launched up until only a couple of years ago phrase match targeting was a really really highly popular way to build your

Google ads campaign I know I used it for over a decade as my go-to strategy and the reason was is because it was effective especially when you also had broad match modifiers so basically what you could do there is you could add in some extra keywords and with phrase match it was just a little bit looser than exact match in that they didn't have to get the right order but what it was doing is that it was offering you a tighter match as to what broad match was doing however that is not the case anymore

and the reason for that is because Google no longer targets the world words in the phrase it targets the meaning of that phrase so when you've got a phrase match and a broad match together they would effectively Target pretty much the same type of keywords and I've seen example after example of what I just showed you of people using phrase match then when you go through and look at the Search terms you can actually see because of the intent meaning that Google is using that it's throwing up really really highly unrelated searches so that's the

first reason for why I don't use phrase match anymore the second reason is is because phrase match is actually a poor and ineffective version of broad match and the way that it stands right now broad match actually takes in more refining signals than phrase match let me show you what I mean and this all comes down to the signals that Google uses so when you look at Broad match you can see that Google also uses not only the keywords it also uses the landing page so the content you've got on the landing page as a

signal it uses other keywords in the ad group it uses the users previous searches and it also takes into account the user's location but with exact in a phrase you can see that Google doesn't take those other signals into account with the biggest ones being the landing page the other keywords in the ad group and also the user location they're the three really important factors that Google includes with broad match which is not included in phras match so let's now break down what we've gone through already so we know now that phras match and Broad

match are giving away the same level of broadness to the search so broad match yes it does give you searches that are not relevant but phrase match does the same thing as well and that comes down to Google ads targeting the meaning of the phrase not the words in that phrase but then when you stack it on top of that the advantage of broad match is that broad match actually has some extra limitations in it that phrase match doesn't have with the key ones being the content on the landing page and also the other keyword

in that ad group so I would understand if people want to be really really limited and targeted in they're searching and only use exact match I don't have a problem with that and I do have some campaigns that are exact match only ESP especially if you're dealing in some markets with that are very very Niche that have really really specific inquiries or if they've got a really really high CPC but what I don't agree with is that people who are using phrase match over broad match because as we've explained so far I would actually now

argue that broad match is actually more limited than phrase match because it brings in those other data points now as as I said I'm still using some campaigns and AD groups that are exact match only but I do want to break out the strategy which we using as a default strategy and that is combining broad match with exact match in the same ad groups but I do need to stress that for this strategy to work you need to be really making sure that you're focusing on your search term Audits and all of your key optimization

actions in Google ads and to help you further so that you don't miss any of these important optimization steps what I want to do is I want to give you access to my Google ads optimization checklist which takes you through all of the important optimization actions that you need to complete for success with Google ads and it also lays out how often you need to complete these actions and if you want to get access right now to my Google ads optimization checklist just follow that link in the description below okay so for this strategy to

effectively work the first thing you need to make sure is that you want to be having longer tail broad match keywords so I do not recommend having two word broad match keywords and I recommend having at least three words in that broad match phrase but ideally four or five different words in that phrase now the reason for why that's so important is because remember that Google ads is now targeting the meaning of the keyword not the keywords that you are using so by having a longer taale keyword as a broad match keyword if you're using

broad match you're giving Google some extra context about the type of products and services that you're advertising and then on top of that what you also want to make sure is that the the targeted URL or the landing page that you've got assigned to the ad copy for that ad group it would also help your results if you've got some targeted content on that landing page remembering when you're using broad match it's not only looking at the keyword that you're targeting but it's also pulling in data from the landing page so when you've got those

two things in place of longer tale keywords and highly relevant landing pages you're putting in some extra safeguards and you're assisting Google with its targeting and ideally I recommend that you only have two or three broad match keywords now big mistake that I do see is that people just have multiple multiple different broad match keywords you only need one or two broad match keywords that have at least three but ideally four or five words in it and they're also going to a highly relevant landing page that has extra content that is relevant to what you're

targeting and then the second thing is is that you want to build out a list of exact match keywords and this is done in your search term Audits and what you're looking at doing there is not only adding in extra negative keywords but also building out a list of exact match keywords and the way that you decide as to whether you should add in a user search term as an exact match keyword is under two protocols firstly are they converting and are you happy with those conversion metrics and secondly if they're not converting or you've

only got a couple of conversions are they highly relevant and they're are search phrase which you really really want to Target and make sure that you're ranking for in when a user completes that search and if a user search ter meets one of those to two criteria I would add it in as an exact match keyword now a common follow-up question I get is you know how many exact match keywords should I have is it five is it 10 is it 20 is it 30 is it 50 and the answer is is that it doesn't

matter how many so you can't have too few and you can't have too many it all comes down to your keyword theme and what I mean by that is that for some niches or some products or Services you might only need a list of five or 10 exact match keywords to cover all the different variations but for other niches you may need 30 40 50 different exact match keywords it's going to be really dependent on your services and your products that you advertising as to how many exact mat keywords you have and now let's come

to the benefits of having broad match and exact match working together in the same ad groups and effectively what we're doing here is we're using our broad match to continue to reach out potential new Searchers remembering that the vast majority of searches that are completed on Google ads are new in that they haven't been searched before so you're always making sure that you're staying ahead of the game when it comes to differences and search Trends and then by building out the exact match keywords you're doing two things one you're getting the data at that keyword

level if someone was to search a term and it's an exact match it would then trigger at the exact match level not the broad match level so that's really allowing you to and I really like to get down into the data of that so you know if you do see some exact match phrases which are not converting and other ones that are converting you can then pause certain exact match keywords add them as a negative keyword so it does give you some extra controls there and what it also does do and especially if you're using

Dynamic keyword insertion in your ad copies remember it gives you more variations and it's more likely that the user will get the search tune that they searched inserted into that headline so there's two quick benefits for using that strategy so thank you for joining me it's been my absolute pleasure having you here and remember if you want to get access to my Google ads optimization checklist make sure you follow that link in the description below and finally because we're talking about keywords the next important step is to make sure that you're completing your keyword research

in the right way and if you want to see the way that I'm doing this right now taking into account all of the changes that Google has been rolling out over the last couple of years go through and watch this video right here thanks again for joining see you next time