Cannot understand one thing - everybody is talking about lists with thousands of keywords. But, if I undertsnad Google Adwords correctly - long lists seem to be pointless. For instance, if I enter a keyword "custom essay" - with phrase match - my ad will show up in all instances where there is a phrase "custom essay". So, there is no point in creating a keyword like "custom essay writing service" - as it will be included in "custom essay", right? The focus should rather be shifted to negative keywords, right?
I don't agree. Yes, you will catch them with the broad term but... 1. Your ads will perform better if you hit the exact term 2. By adding all the variations you will build up an exact profile of which variations bring in the clicks and which ones the sales. That's powerful information you can use to great advantage. info you wouldn't have collected had you chosen just the basic form of the phrase. I always add as many variations as I can. If I say one perform outstandingly, I dedicate an ad to it and/or optimize my pages for it/a new landing page for it. It's all about knowing what's going on. Data is vital.
Well said. I live and die on exact match. Broad/phrase works in some situations but exact match is where I like to play - especially after the change announced earlier this year. Broad and phrase match are not the "catch alls" they once were. "If you notice a decline in impressions or clicks on some of your keywords, you may wish to ensure that your most important terms are each specifically entered as keywords in their own right, rather than relying on broad or phrase match to include them. Or, if you notice an unwanted increase in impressions or clicks for some keywords, consider adding negative keywords to more finely tune your targeting. "
Absolutely correct - to those who're having trouble understanding the importance of exact over broad, take the following hypothetical into play: You have 1 keyword on broad, "strange widget", which is getting 1000 impressions/day, @ 5% CTR. Okay, fair enough, this may be satisfactory to you, but suppose you split that keyword into exact keywords, you now have: "strange widget" "strange widget alternatives" You run this for a day and realise that "strange widget" was getting 10% CTR @ 500 impressions/day, and the "strange widget alternatives" was actually getting 0 clicks, but still raising your impressions by 500/day. Not only have you "undiluted" the quality score of your top performing keyword, you've now found out which keywords are not performing (the "alternatives" keyword). Whilst real world examples vary, this is probably the simplest way I could put it :S
With the provided clarification in mind - now I can tell - Keyword Discovery that I have rushed to purchase was a waste, as there is no need to search for sophisticated phrases - all of them can be logically figured out. Instead, one should use negative keywords. But oh well, that was a $50 lesson you guys helped me to figure out