Now that you are familiar with how to start using your Google AdWords account, let’s move on to the details.
Keywords are one of the most important elements of your AdWords campaigns. If you choose keywords that are too broad, you’ll spend way more without seeing any results. Meanwhile, if your keywords are too narrow, no one will see your keywords.
So how can you choose the right keywords and make sure they’re appearing for the right audience?
Google Keyword Planner
Google provides a free tool in your account to help you find new keywords and gauge volume around them. This is the best place to start researching keywords when you’re creating new campaigns.
With the Keyword Planner, you can handle a few tasks:
- search for keyword and ad group ideas,
- preview a keyword list’s performance based on your targeting,
- and create a new keyword list by combining several lists of keywords together.
For more information visit AdWords’Â keyword planner guide.
Search Bar
Another quick way to source new keyword ideas is to use a tool you’re already probably very familiar with: Google’s search bar!
Google’s autocomplete feature generates search predictions similar to the keyword you are typing, based on their historical data about what queries folks are searching. Pick a handful of new keywords and see what Google populates! 
Match Types
Each keyword has a match type, which determines how broadly a user’s search query will match to the keyword in your account. Let’s run through an example with the keyword wine festival to help you understand how they work.
- Exact Match. This type presents your ad only when the exact term is entered.
- wine festival
- Phrase Match. This type displays your ad when the query includes additional keywords before or after the core phrase.
- nyc wine festival
- Modified Broad Match. This type displays your ad when any of the keywords are entered in any order with additional keywords.
- wine from nyc festival
- Broad Match. This type displays your ad when the query includes similar or related keywords.
- merlot festivals
To learn more about match types, visit AdWords’Â match type guide.
Negative Keywords
Negative keywords are a crucial part of every campaign! These keywords prevent your ads from displaying when a particular keyword is included in a search.
Let’s continue using the wine festival example:
If you want to show for wine festival keywords, but not for wine festival accident, you would want to add accident on negative phrase match to your campaigns.
Why are negatives so important? They improve the performance of your AdWords campaigns by weeding out unnecessary or problematic spending on people who aren’t searching for keywords that benefit you.
Missed the other posts in the series?
I. Finding New Customers and Helping Them Find You
II. Intro to AdWords and Writing Your First Ad
III. AdWords for Advanced Users