Keywords are one of the most important things you should know about as an online marketer. They are used in many places online to market your website or product. One of those places is Google AdWords. It used to be on AdWords if you wanted to target just an exact keyword, you could. So for example, you could target the keyword “cheeseburger” and that word only. Earlier this year, Google decided that they no longer wanted advertisers to be able to target just those exact words.

Instead they’ve come up with a system called close variant matching, which will show search results based on keywords close to the original. For example, instead of just “cheeseburger” your ad would also be displayed for “chesseburger” and “cheeseburgrs”. Google says that by making this the only option, AdWords users have seen a 7% increase in click throughs. And that is a good thing, at least for the most part. Except when it isn’t. If you only wanted to target that one keyword, what are you to do?

Another reason why you want to be able to control you exact keywords is that you’re running with a budget. That means that any additional keywords that Google throws in there as close variants, will take away from the keywords you actually want to be advertising for. So today we’re going to look at several things you should do to prepare your campaigns for this new Google close variant matching policy.

Build a Negative Keyword List

Negative keywords are keywords that you don’t want to show up for. Add them to your campaign and Google will no longer include you in those phrase and exact term keywords. This is something that you’ll have to do over time, as you’ll need to see what variants you’re showing up for. Then you’ll need to determine which of those variants you want to put into your negative keyword list.

Take out any variant that you don’t want to show up for, so that you can save that money.

Monitor Your SQR Report

The SQR report is the Google term for the report that tells you what keywords people are searching for. You should monitor this as often as possible. It is the report that will tell you what variants on your keywords are getting searched for, which are leading to clicks on your links, and which ones you want to add to your negative keyword list in order to reduce the volume of your advertisements back to under your budget level.

The Positive Close Variant Matching Situation

Google didn’t do this to be evil. A lot of advertisers, if not the majority, want to show up for keywords and search terms even if the searcher mistyped the term. Going back to the “cheeseburgers” example, most people who are trying to use that as a keyword would also want to use “chesseburgers” because the person searching for that obviously meant the real thing.

There will be some close variants that you’ll want to keep around, and to not add to your negative keyword list. Make sure you keep a note of how these variants perform so you know how much traffic you’re generating from them.