Broad match can harm PPC campaigns

Specifying pay-per-click (PPC) advertisements to use broad match keywords can result in low-quality traffic being driven to a website, it has been claimed.

Writing for PPC Hero, John explains that marketing managers could find their efforts made more effective by diversifying the match types they specify for different advertisements.

In the case of Google, this could mean opting for phrase-based or exact matches - potentially leading to a more focused audience receiving the advertisement.

He notes that Yahoo! users are faced with different match types from which to choose, with advanced match being their equivalent of Google and MSN's broad options.

John writes: "The issue is you are giving the search engines free licence to match user search queries to your keyword.

"This can leave you open for unqualified traffic, low click-through rates and low conversion rates."

However, he concedes that broad match is a means of achieving a "jump start" in terms of driving larger volumes of traffic to a site via a PPC campaign.

John previously pointed out that negative matches - or "excluded keywords" for Yahoo! users - are one way to specify terms for which advertisements should particularly not be displayed.

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