hey, i got a guestion about using the google keyword tool. what is the difference between the broad and exact match? let's say i am doing a research on "mountain bike accessories". when set to broad match type google says it gets 18,100 searches a month and when set to exact match type it says 9,900. assuming that i manage to rank #1 and assuming that half of the people click on the #1 result, how many visitors will i get, half of 18,100 or half of 9,900? thanks!
My experiance comes from advertising with yahoo. It would allow you to bid on exact keywords or you could bid on broad or wild searches with the keyword you were bidding on. So if you bid exact on shoes you would come up for "shoes". But if you bid broad on shoes than you might come up for "Best Red Shoes" also.
Broad match is the keyword phrase, or other "closely" related keywords. Of course, my definition of close and Google's don't always match well, at least based on some AdWords experience. Exact match is a match for only that exact keyword phrase. In other words, what you see as the keyword is what the person typed in to search. You're better off judging potential traffic from the exact match, from what I've seen. Hope that helps...
Use the exact match. Go after those keywords that are typed in exactly as they appear. Once you optimize for that exact match term, you will hit upon the broad ones as well.
broad match would be "where to find mountain bike accessories" "cheap mountain bike accessories" "accessories for mountain bike" etc. exact match would be when people search for "mountain bike accessories" you should always focus on the exact match and not the broad match. how much traffic you would get form #1 ranking for the term is hard to say. the result you see there is not just google result but the result for gogole search as well as the search result from google partner sites. i use the rule of thumb and say you could expect 40% of 9900 if you rank #1 for that term
This article answers lots of question that have to do with the Google keyword tool: How To Use Googles Keyword Tool – Find The Keywords You Need Fast It also includes a video that may be of help to you.