So many people try and set up their own Adwords campaigns without really fully understanding exactly what it is they need to do. Although Adwords is very user friendly, it is quite common for people to make simple mistakes which can have a big impact on how successful their campaign is.
One of the mistakes people tend to make is when it comes to match types. There are three different match types – Broad match, Phrase match and Exact match.
Broad match keywords will trigger your ad to show whenever someone searches for that phrase, similar phrases, singular or plural forms, misspellings, synonyms and other relevant variations. For example, if the phrase was bike helmets, then it would show for how to choose the correct size bike helmet etc. Although this may get you a lot of impressions and possibly clicks it can result in a very high bounce rate and wasted budget.
Phrase match is more specific and will only trigger your ads if someone searches for the keyword you have used or very similar. For example, the keyword bike helmet will show for children bike helmet and red bike helmet. Phrase match is more flexible than exact match but is more targeted than the default broad match option.
Exact match is what is sounds. The ad will only be triggered if someone searches for the exact phrase you have put in.