Google’s been offering some great AdWords tips lately. Specifically, they recently discussed the advantages of using the broad match option and the negative keyword option. Mike McDonald also spoke with Ken Jurina of Epiar about the negative keyword option in the following interview at PubCon.

While there is a ton of great info related to the different AdWords keyword options, Microsoft AdCenter offers some options of their own, that aren’t really discussed as often as those of AdWords. A post today from Tina Kelleher at the Microsoft AdCenter blog talks about some ways to reduce your CPC (cost-per-click) with some of their own options. A couple of ways to do so include:

- Bidding across Match Types, and
– Using negative keywords to qualify traffic

When it comes to bidding across Match Types, Kelleher says:

If you’re unsure of what the differences are between Exact, Phrase and Broad match types, I would recommend reading through Lauren Taft-McPhee’s post on the topic before continuing on as I am going to assume these concepts are familiar to you.

Bidding aggressively on Exact match only is a great strategy for keeping your traffic highly targeted and relevant.  If, however, you’re finding that your impressions aren’t as high as you’d like them to be, you should expand your bidding to Phrase match, Broad match, or both.  Doing so can help lower your overall average CPC as competitive pricing can sometimes be lower on different match types. 

As far as negative keywords, it is basically the same concept as that talked about by Google here. Kelleher gives an example about a travel agency. A travel agency might bid on "holiday travel", but use negative keywords to eliminate searches for "Billie Holiday" or lyrics to the Madonna song "Holiday."

The lesson here is that when using search engine advertising, you’ve got options available to you that you would do well to utilize. This is especially true as marketing budgets tighten as a result of the economy, and marketers are looking to reallocate their budgets to make sure their dollars are being spent in the wisest possible strategies. Utilizing the right match options whether you’re using AdWords or AdCenter (or both) can help you reduce that amount of dollars that are being spent. Microsoft has another good article on Match Types here.