It is good to have high volume traffic but I have been trying to get quality clicks. Every Clicks cost. Therefore, I want visitors that really have interest. I have been using strictly Match Exact Phrase. Should I be considering to use Broad Match? Will this open the door for causal visitors that are just surfing?
While it is good to have volume traffic for 90% of the websites online this is not a reality. What is better is to improve the conversion to goal of the visitors a website has., Broad match can eat up all the money in your pocket, hidden under the mattress and drain all of your bank accounts. Here is why, Broad match means your keywords can trigger your ad to be displayed to an unrelated query. For example if you sell silk roses and only silk roses.... then you would not want to run a broad match campaign with the keyword - 'rose' as this would cause your ad to be displayed for searches such as dozen red roses rose plant food rose bushes Rose Kennedy Rose wine rose petals rose colored glasses rose care boxed red roses fresh roses etc etc (There are over 100 unrelated phrases with the word 'rose' somewhere in the phrase that I was able to find) Since one sells only silk roses, having the ad displayed for queries such as the ones above.... could generate clicks... where the user intent is to buy the items they searched for and not silk roses. Stick with what you have...improve conversions,...roll campaigns to other paid search programs such as Msn & Yahoo! Peace!
Are you keeping your ad groups tight? Each group should have just a few keywords for exact, broad and regular phrases and have ads that are related to the keyword for their relevancy. Broad matches and short keywords are people that are most likely just browsing and not looking to buy. These keywords might be better targeted to a lead capture page to build a list rather then directing it to a sales page. Depending on what you are selling you should use the product name as a keyword and also "buy (keyword here)" and maybe even try placing a bid for a url. It is also important to build a big negative keyword list to weed out untargeted traffic.
I would only use broad match if I were bidding on very long tail keywords and if I made sure I put every single negative keyword I could think of in there. Use exact and phrase match with short keywords and if you're trying to dig deeper with known converting keywords. For example: If the keyword `fancy pants` is converting for you, you may want to dig deeper and go for some misspellings and other keyword types based on that seed word, BUT only use exact match in this case. So you could have: [fancypants] [ffany pants] [fansy pants] [fantsy pants] [fancy-pants] etc. Those will be lower volume then the seed, but they will cost less as well.
I agree with every one above and they all had good points! Broad match will definitely cost more in the end and will most likely not give as much return as you may want. You should definitely stick with the exact match for more qualified leads, but you can also set a budget for a small campaign for broad match.....but just make sure you are choosing keywords that would be better for you. This helps reduce risk and allows you to see if any of the broad match keywords work. But then again, it all depends on what you sell/service and what key phrase you have. I have seen lots of crazy ads on Google that are appearing anywhere with no-true relevancy to the search term/keywords. If a person clicks on your link and thinks that you are a relevant ad, you will have to pay for it and it will be inefficient for your expenses.