Bing Introduces Broad Match Modifier for More Control
Bing is introducing a new feature that will give marketers more control over broad match keywords. Many advertisers avoid using broad match keywords because of how unpredictable they are. With the updated features those broad match keywords may be a little more desirable.
How Broad Match Keywords Work
The basic idea behind broad match keywords is that if you aren’t getting a good response for your current keyword, Bing or Google will offer up better options automatically and start generating traffic from them instead. This keeps you from having to pay for traffic that isn’t converting, but you could end up switching to traffic that just doesn’t make sense if they choose a similar word that stops being relevant. Not only are they allowed to switch your keywords to synonyms or other keywords that seem to make sense, but they can use your keywords in phrases that contain them. You could go from colonial window treatments to books on colonial treatments and all of your visitors would be expecting books upon reaching your site.
Broad Match Modifier
The broad match modifier option allows you to avoid any automatic keywords that don’t have your specified keywords in them. The modifier process is pretty simple, you simply put a + sign next to the keywords that the additional matches need to have in them. Then when you are switched from your current keyword to a different keyword all of the marked words will be included in the new selection. With this additional layer of control you can make sure the most important words continue to be in the results, even if the less useful words get traded out for something better.
Introducing Broad Match Keywords
Many marketers who were afraid to go beyond phrase match keywords can now start to test out broad match keywords. Although they are a little scary to work with at first, because of how unpredictable they are, they can do wonders for a stale campaign. With broad match keywords in your campaign you can increase the volume it receives as well as the CTR in some circumstances.
Conclusion
Whether the new offerings are going to increase Bing’s PPC users is still to be determined, but if you currently use them you have another tool at your disposal.
