Should I bid on longer phrases if I already have the root keyword in Phrase Match?

So, if I have the Keyword "Family Photographer" as Phrase Match, is there any point in building a keyword list with all the different Prefixes (best Family photographer, local, ect)? Since I have the root phrase, Family Photographer, down pat in Phrase match, my ad will show up, no matter the prefix.

Obviously we want the ad titles to be relevant, but I'm not gonna make "Best Local Family Photographer" a title anyway.

 

Using the word BEST would be against the TOS anyways like you mentioned it would not be worth making an ad for that exact keyword.

I do recommend you break each keyword into it's own adgroup and use a custom ad for each keyword set.

so Family Photographer would be in 1 adgroup as

"Family Photographer"
[Family Photographer]

I personally like to use Broad match modified over Broad as well so I would include

+Family +Photographer

The BMM will get you longer keyword phrase where those words are used but unlike Phrase they don't have to be together.

So if I found another keyword like Family Photographer CITY NAME I would create a customize adgroup and ad for that keyword.

You will find that doing this tends to help out more with Quality Score. You are trying to make 2 people happy. Google The machine and the customer. Customized ads for each keyword set has a higher chance of satisfying both parties.

 

As you said, "family photographer" is the root keyword. I don't and wouldn't expand with what I call fluff words like best and others like that. It adds no value to the keyword and you'll get few impressions anyway. You also can go on forever by doing this and for very little value in return.

I would create a campaign just as Jerdei said. The Family Photographer group would contain the root keyword in all three match types. You may find that the exact match is the one most people use, the phrase match will handle searches such as "best family photographer" and you'll be able to see how often such phrases are used compared to the exact match. Knowing this can help. Finally, the broad modified match will handle all the rest which itself will be useful to know comparative search volumes and the search terms report give ideas for new keywords as well as negatives. My guess is a certain percentage of people will search "family portrait photographer" and may be best to have a group for that eventually.

I would have a Family Photographer City group as well.

Don't forget about lateral and synonym words (family, children...) and split into their own groups.

Try different selling points. Avoid using the same or similar ads in all groups. As long as you are testing, test different things and specific to your keywords.

 

Cool. I actually did most of the things you mentioned, with a separate ad group for portrait, and city.

I have heard that you shouldn't use all 3 match types in the same ad group, because google might bid your keywords against each other. I also heard that this is not a problem, because google with simply choose the match type that fits the best, either exact, or phrase. Is this true?

 

Yes, the algo will choose the best fit match type. The sequence is exact, phrase, broad modified then finally broad. So if you have a keyword that exactly matches the search term, your ad will be triggered on the exact match. If there is none that exactly match, it checks phrases matches and if there is no match, the broad matches and I believe it will do the modified version first. BTW, I don't think you should have both versions of broad matches. I've been using BMM since it came out and never used the original broad match type since.

 

Thanks.

Yeah, i actually just started with phrase and exact, cause broad match scares me. I have to learn about BMM

 

It should scare you. I haven't used "regular" broad match in years since they came out with BMM. Bing also and finally uses it too since about 1.5 years ago.

The problem with plain broad match is that it's very liberal. You could have a keyword such as "dog food" (without the quotes of course) and it could trigger your ads on a the search term "dog fence" or even one containing the word food like "oriental food".

BMM works just the way you expect broad match to work. That is, show my ads only when those keywords are indeed in the search term. All you need to do is add a + in front of the words such as

+family +photographer

This insures that both those words need to be in the search term in any order. They won't be expanded to include unrelated terms. You lose just a bit in synonyms such as pooch equating to dog but a small price to pay. I would not be scared of BMM.