Solved: Phrase Match Too Broad? Exact Match Strategy

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out! Happy to give you some initial thoughts on the Google Ads situation you described. It's a classic problem, moving from the wild west of broad/phrase match to a more controlled environment. You're definately on the right track thinking about tightening things up, but just switching to exact match without a broader strategy can sometimes cause more problems than it solves.

Below is a pretty detailed breakdown of my thoughts on how you should approach this, from match types and Quality Score right through to the landing pages, which are probably the biggest issue holding you back.

We'll need to look at the Match Type Mess...

Okay, so let's tackle the first bit. You've correctly identified that Phrase Match is casting the net way too wide. Seeing 80% of your search terms being branded or competitor terms when you're likely aiming for non-branded traffic is a massive budget leak. It's like going fishing for cod and catching old boots and shopping trolleys most of the time. You might get the odd fish, but you're wasting a lot of bait.

Your instinct to switch to Exact Match for more control is bang on. It's the right move. However, the risk you've pointed out – a drop in impressions and clicks – is very real if you just swap the match type on your existing keywords. You'll go from a firehose of (mostly bad) traffic to a tiny trickle. This is a common mistake people make, they panic when they see the volume drop and switch back, thinking it wasn't working.

The solution isn't Phrase vs. Exact. It's using them together, intelligently. Your Phrase Match campaigns have actually done something useful: they've acted as a research tool. You now have a pile of data in your Search Term Report. This is where the gold is.

The process should look something like this:

1. Mine Your Search Term Report: Go through the report for your Phrase Match campaigns with a fine-tooth comb. Identify every single search term that has converted or is highly relevent to what you offer. These are your proven winners.
2. Build Your Exact Match Ad Groups: Take those proven search terms and build new, tightly-themed ad groups around them using [exact match]. Sometimes, this means one keyword per ad group (a SKAG - Single Keyword Ad Group). This gives you ultimate control over the ad copy and landing page for that specific search intent.
3. Use Phrase Match for Prospecting: Keep a separate, smaller-budget campaign using Phrase Match. Its only job is to discover *new* search terms. Think of it as your research and development department. As you find new converting search terms in this campaign, you move them over to your main Exact Match campaigns.
4. Be Aggressive with Negative Keywords: This is so important. As you're mining your search term report, you should be building a massive list of negative keywords. Every irrelevant term, every competitor brand name (unless you're running a specific competitor campaign), every branded term should be added as a negative to your non-branded campaigns. This stops the budget leak at the source.

This "mining and refining" process gives you the best of both worlds: the control and efficiency of Exact Match for your core terms, and the discovery potential of Phrase Match, but in a controlled way that doesn't burn your main budget. I've put together a little flowchart to make this process clearer.

I'd say you're obsessing over the wrong metric with Quality Score...

You mentioned your Quality Score is very low, and you're planning to build targeted landing pages to fix it. This is good thinking, but it's important to understand what Quality Score (QS) actually is. Too many advertisers get obsessed with chasing a 10/10 QS on every keyword, which is a waste of time.

Think of QS as a diagnostic tool, like a check-engine light in your car. It's not the goal itself; the goal is a profitable cost-per-conversion. QS just gives you clues about *why* your costs might be high. It's made up of three main parts:

• Expected Click-Through Rate (CTR): How likely is your ad to be clicked when shown for that keyword, compared to competitors?
• Ad Relevance: How closely does your ad copy match the intent behind the user's search query?
• Landing Page Experience: Is your landing page relevant, trustworthy, easy to navigate, and does it deliver on the promise of the ad?

A low QS is just Google's way of telling you that you're falling down in one or more of these areas. Based on what you've said, your problem is almost certainly Ad Relevance and Landing Page Experience. When you're using broad Phrase Match, it's impossible to write a specific, highly-relevent ad because the search terms are all over the place. And if you're sending all that varied traffic to a single, generic landing page, the experience for the user is going to be poor.

The strategy we just talked about – creating tightly-themed ad groups with Exact Match keywords – is the first step to fixing this. When you have an ad group with just one keyword like [emergency electrician near me], you can write an ad that says "24/7 Emergency Electrician - Call Us Now" and you know it's perfectly relevant. That fixes the Ad Relevance part.

The next, and arguably more important part, is the landing page. Building targeted landing pages isn't just a "nice to have" to improve a score; it's the absolute core of a successful search campaign. We'll get into that in more detail next, but first, here's a little calculator to help you see how the different components affect your QS and, ultimately, your costs. It's a simplified model, but it shows how improving your landing page can have a bigger impact than anything else.

You probably should obsess about your landing pages...

Right, this is the big one. If I had to guess, your landing page experience is what's really killing your performance. Even if you get your keyword strategy perfect, if you send that high-intent traffic to a page that doesn't deliver, you're just burning money faster. I've seen countless businesses with fantastic products and clever ad campaigns fail because their landing page was an afterthought. It's like having a brilliant salesperson who brings customers to the door of a shop that's messy, confusing, and has no one at the till.

You've already said you're looking to build targeted landing pages based on ad group keywords. This is exactly what you need to do. The guiding principle here is called "message match".

Message Match is everything. The headline of your ad should be reflected, almost word-for-word, in the headline of your landing page. The promises you make in the ad copy should be the first things the user sees when they land. If someone clicks an ad for "B2B accounting software for startups", the landing page better not just be your generic homepage. It should scream "The Best Accounting Software for Startups" right at the top.

A good landing page for a search ad does a few things very well:

• A Single, Clear Goal: What is the ONE thing you want the user to do? Fill out a form? Call you? Buy a product? The entire page should be designed to funnel the user towards that single action. Remove distracting navigation menus, links to your blog, social media icons – anything that could pull them away from the conversion goal.
• Persuasive, User-Focused Copy: The copy shouldn't be about you and your company's history. It should be about the searcher and their problem. Use the "Problem-Agitate-Solve" framework. State their pain point directly ("Tired of messy spreadsheets?"), agitate it ("Wasting hours on manual data entry?"), and then present your service as the clear solution.
• Trust Signals: Why should a stranger trust you with their money or contact information? You need to build credibility instantly. This means customer testimonials, reviews, logos of companies you've worked with, security badges, professional design. A page that looks cheap or untrustworthy will have a sky-high bounce rate.
• A Compelling Call-to-Action (CTA): Your CTA button shouldn't be a lame "Submit". It should be benefit-oriented. Instead of "Download", try "Get My Free Guide". Instead of "Sign Up", try "Start My Free Trial". It should be visually prominent and tell the user exactly what will happen when they click it.

Remember, the user has come from Google with a very specific problem in mind. They are impatient. They'll give your page about three seconds to convince them they're in the right place. If it doesn't immediately confirm they've found the solution, they'll hit the back button without a second thought, and you'll have paid for the click for nothing. That’s why a generic homepage almost never works for paid traffic. It's trying to be everything to everyone and ends up being nothing to the person who just clicked your ad. We've taken on clients who were seeing conversion rates of less than 1% sending traffic to their homepage. By creating dedicated landing pages, we've pushed that up to 10-15% for the exact same traffic. It's often the single biggest lever you can pull for better performance.

You'll need a structure that puts you in control...

So, we've talked about refining your keywords and fixing your landing pages. The final piece of the puzzle is putting it all together in a campaign structure that makes sense and is easy to manage. When you have low Quality Scores and budget being wasted, it's often a sign that your account structure is too messy.

The ideal structure is one that groups things by user intent. Your current structure, with broad phrase match keywords all lumped together, is mixing intents. Someone searching for "your brand name" has a totally different intent to someone searching for "your competitor's name" or "how to solve X problem". They all need different ads and different landing pages.

A much better approach is to break your campaigns out like this:

• Campaign 1: Brand
  • This campaign targets only your own company name and variations of it, using Exact Match.
  • The goal here is to protect your brand from competitors bidding on your name and to capture high-intent users who are already looking for you.
  • The ad copy can be confident, reinforcing your brand message. The landing page can be your homepage, as these users already know who you are. Bids here should be high enough to ensure you're always at the top.
• Campaign 2: Non-Brand (Problem/Solution)
  • This is where you'll house all your tightly-themed, Exact Match ad groups for the keywords you mined from your search term report.
  • Each ad group should focus on a very specific problem or service (e.g., "AI Implementation Service", "Emergency Electrical Repair").
  • Ad copy and landing pages MUST be tailored to each ad group. This is where you'll see the biggest improvment in Quality Score and conversion rate.
  • This is where the bulk of your budget and optimisation efforts should go.
• Campaign 3: Competitor (Optional, Advanced)
  • This campaign targets the brand names of your direct competitors.
  • This is an aggressive strategy. The goal is to poach customers who are close to buying from a rival.
  • Your ad copy needs to be very clever, highlighting your unique selling proposition (USP) against that specific competitor (e.g., "Tired of [Competitor]'s High Prices? Get a Free Quote Today").
  • Your landing page must be a dedicated comparison page that directly addresses why your solution is better. Quality Scores here will naturally be lower, so you have to be prepared to pay more per click.
• Campaign 4: Prospecting (Phrase Match)
  • As discussed before, a small, controlled budget campaign using Phrase Match to discover new keywords.
  • This campaign should have all your Brand, Competitor, and proven Exact Match keywords added as negatives to ensure it's only finding genuinely new search terms.

This structure gives you total clarity. You can see at a glance how your brand defense is doing versus your new customer acquisition. You can allocate budget precisely where it's most effective. And most importantly, it forces you to adopt the good habits of creating highly relevant ads and landing pages for each specific user intent. It eliminates the chaos that's causing your current problems.

This is the main advice I have for you:

I know this is a lot to take in, so I've boiled down the key recommendations into an action plan. This is the exact process we'd follow to turn your account around from a leaky, inefficient state into a controlled, performance-focused machine.

Following this plan will be a lot more work than just switching your current keywords to exact match, but it will fundamentally fix the problems in your account rather than just papering over the cracks. It moves you from a reactive approach (managing negatives) to a proactive one (building for relevance from the ground up).

This is obviously a complex process with a lot of moving parts. It requires expertise not just in Google Ads settings, but in conversion rate optimisation, copywriting, and analytics. Getting it right can be the difference between an ad account that bleeds cash and one that becomes a reliable engine for growth. For instance, for a client in the medical recruitment software space, we took over their campaigns on Google and Meta Ads. Their cost per user acquisition was £100; we brought it down to just £7.

If you'd like to go over your specific situation in more detail, we offer a free, no-obligation initial consultation where we can review your account together and map out a more tailored strategy. It often helps to have a second pair of expert eyes on things.

Hope that helps!

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh