A Step-by-Step Guide to Better Keywords: Understanding Match Type in Google Keywords Tool

Choosing keywords is one of the most important ingredients in a successful content marketing campaign.

What is Google Keyword Tool ?

Well Google Keyword Tool is a set of online tools provided by Google itself to help webmasters search and use the best suited keywords for their Blog Posts. This helps Google and other search engines to better index your blogs.

How do I use Google Keyword Tool ?

Well here’s a simple Guide on how to use Google Keyword Tool to get the most optimum keywords for your Post.

1. Click on the link to access the Keyword Tool – Google AdWords
2. Enter in whatever CAPTCHA you are required to.
3. Write  the title  you have shortlisted  into the “Word or Phrase” box at the top left corner of the page, hitting return to before entering a new title.
4. When you are finished entering potential titles, click the search button. The results will be a mixture of potential titles you have entered mixed with related searches of note.
5. Next, take a look at the results. If some of the keywords and search terms do not pertain to your subject matter, you can filter these results by selecting one of the categories at the right side of the page.

What are Match Types.

While using Google Keywords tool many people don’t understand the importance of Match Types and simply ignore them. By now I hope that you have tried Google Keyword tool at least once. Match Types are actually a way to search better keywords targeted at a specific product.

It’s like when you search for something you may not know the exact phrase to use for it and you may try different combinations to get the desired result in the search engine(read: Use Google like a Pro). Match type help you to filter out the irrelevant keywords or add various variants for the same phrase.

There are basically 4 different types of match types available in Google Keywords:

Broad match :

These are the most wide range of keywords for a phrase. For example a search for the phrase  will be counted under broad match type when searched without quotes and the two words in the phrase can occur at any sequence in the query.

For example the user may have searched ” How to bake a cake” to “how to bake cake php”

These are the most poorly targeted Keywords and should be best avoided.

Phrase match :

These are much like using quotes in organic search results. These allow you to target a specific keyword typed in a specific order. Phrase match campaigns
are cheaper than broad match campaigns, and the traffic they drive toward your site is more valuable.

Exact match :

Exact match type is very similar to Phrase match but is a bit more specific. Instead of targeting anyone who types your phrase into a search engine,exact match limits your potential visitors to the people who type only that phrase and nothing more. These are very useful when one wants to tackle the issue of people searching a phrase in different context.

Negative match :

These can be used with any other match type. These are also the most powerful of all 4 in the list. A negative Match type helps you to exclude the words that you don’t want your site or service to be featured in when searched for. These are quite similar to the use of  ‘-’ in an organic search. For example suppose you don’t offer free cakes and don’t want to get feature in a search like “free baked cake” or such, then you might want to add the word free as a negative match.

Good understanding of Keywords will surely boost your search engine ranks and will also help you to develop a better marketing campaign to get better results and traffic that converts to revenue.