Are you paying too much for your own Brand terms? Are your PPC campaigns cannibalising one another and pushing up your own costs? If so, Stellar Search can help you!How do you know if you are paying too much for your own Brand CPC's?If you are an advertiser on Google AdWords and are bidding on your Brand terms then you may be inflating your own CPC's. You can check this by logging into your own AdWords account (or ask your PPC agency to do so) and see if your Brand term are all split out by match type or whether you have keywords on different match types (Exact, Phrase and Broad) in the same ad group. If they are all in the same ad group, do some of your Broad or Phrase match terms have higher max CPC's than your Exact match terms? If they do, then you are inflating your own CPC's. If your Brand terms are split out by match type into seperate ad groups or campaigns, do you have negative exact match terms on your Phrase match keywords? Or if you have Phrase and Broad match Branded terms, do your Broad match terms have negative Phrase match keywords? If they don't, then you are inflating your own CPC's. Keyword Cannibalisation due to Match Types explainedThe diagram below shows how a Brand term (in this case 'Stellar') should be set up across the different match types and how negative match types should be implemented...

By implementing negative match types as shown above, you are telling Google that you want your exact match keyword to show for your exact Brand term and that the Phrase and Broad match terms should pick up on keywords around your actual Brand term, but not the actual keyword itself (this is the same for Broad and negative Phrase match terms.) By doing this you are causing no 'overlap' where Google AdWords has the option of showing either the Exact or Phrase match keyword for your Brand term. If there is an overlap then Google AdWords see this an another competing keyword within the auction for that search term and as Google AdWords only shows one result per domain, it triggers the keyword with the highest max bid. Even if your Exact match term does have a higher max bid than your Phrase (or Broad) match keyword, if it is not negatived out, then it will increase the CPC that you pay for your Exact match term as the Phrase match term will still be trigged in Google AdWords algorithm when it comes to bidding calculation, even if it doesn't show in the actual SERPS (search engine results pages.)The effect of keyword cannibalisation...Stellar Search have audited many Google AdWords accounts and when we see new accounts that come over to us review, we often find that PPC accounts are suffering from keyword cannibalisation. By implementing a clear and effective match type strategy to prevent keyword cannibalisation we have seen upto 45% reductions in avg CPCs paid for a number of our clients. In some cases this has meant savings of £00,000's for our clients that they can then reinvest into other marketing activities.What can you do?If you think that your PPC account may be suffering from keyword cannibalisation, then the first step is to check your AdWords accounts.

1. Check if your keywords are split out by match type at ad group or campaign level.
2. Check if you Phrase or Broad match bids are higher than your Exact match bids.
3. Check if you have negatives implemented in your Phrase or Broad match campaigns or ad groups.

If you find that you keywords aren't split out by match type, that your bids are incorrectly set or that you don't have negatives implemented correctly...then you need to take action and save spending unnecessarily on Google AdWords.Feel free to contact Stellar Search and we can help you audit our PPC accounts to see if you are a victim of keyword cannibalisation. When can then provide consultancy and advice on how to improve the performance of your PPC campaigns or assist you in managing your PPC campaigns to help you drive better performance and ensuring that you have the right ads...showing to your customers...at the right time.Contact Stellar Search via:P: 0845 0513 996E: hello@stellarsearch.co.ukWe want to help you save money on Google AdWords!Brought to you by the Stellar Search Team.