Your Customers Don’t Have to Be Good Spellers to Find You Online. Here’s Why…
Most advertisers have horror stories about the long list of misspelled words, abbreviations and other lists they’ve built in order to make sure that users found their products online, no matter what search term was used. Think of it: blue t-shirts; Blu Shirts; blew tshirts. Each of these would be added to your list of keywords to get the coverage you wanted. But no longer.
Google’s introducing Close Variant Keyword Matching to all exact and phrase match keywords. Close variant matching was already the default setting for campaigns, so most advertisers won’t see a change in their keyword behavior. However, some advertisers who opted out will discover that their option to disable close variants no longer exists (it was removed in September).
Your exact and phrase match keywords now match to close keyword variations, giving you a more expansive reach with an ad, while lowering your cost per click and improving your clickthrough rate. This new update gives you the freedom to focus on negative keywords (meaning close variants you don’t want to match for) to help shape your traffic and reduce your overall costs.
A Little Helpful Trick About This Latest Update
While this update aims to help improve your ROI, keep in mind that the AdWords system prefers triggering ads that use keywords that identically match a search query. What this means is you can still use all those misspelled words, abbreviations, and other variations of your keywords. You can then monitor the performances of your variants. If you happen to discover that one variant outperforms another, add the better performing ones as separate keywords.
The Proof Has Been In The Pudding Since 2012
Although making the Close Variant Keyword Matching a widespread update is new to this year, it’s been around since 2012. The results of its existence is what led Google to expand its reaches. Most advertisers have been matching to close keyword variations for the last couple of years, and have received 7% more exact and phrase match clicks as a result. Companies such as Shopify, Stitch America and Underground Elephant have seen impressive results from using Close Variant Keyword Matching. Stitch America, for example, has seen 5x as many clicks for exact and phrase match keywords, with all this additional traffic costing them half as much as it would have cost in the past.
Time To Adjust Your Marketing Strategies and Use Close Variant Keyword Matching To Its Full Potential
By now you’ve either already begun, or are frantically beginning, your holiday marketing campaigns. But that doesn’t mean that there’s no room or time for you to test new changes to your marketing strategies. Now that Close Variant Keyword Matching is a part of your life, are you using it to its full potential? Advertisers who actively and appropriately use Close Variant Keyword Matching will almost assuredly see an uptick in traffic, without necessarily having to spend extra money for it. At OperationROI, we’ll help you tap into the full potential of Close Variant Keyword Matching, to ensure your campaigns are bringing in the best return on investment. Call us today at 1-888-277-5429 or fill out our contact form to learn more.
