A lot of people nowadays use the phrase or even exact match which I believe is not good for the long term and also restricts your advertising and product reach.

You want a bigger targeting reach without compromising relevance too much. For that specific purpose, Exact is too narrow, Broad is too irrelevant. You think Phrase solves that the best. It doesn’t. The phrase will ONLY show you on search terms where the new word is on left/right. No rearrangements. No visibility if the additional word is even placed between the keyword’s words. I think it’s a waste of time and a sin to run it, especially when it has a smarter twin brother. Broad Modifier does everything that Phrase does. But it will also show you rearrangements.

It will also show you if the new word is placed between the keyword’s words. And you don’t lose ANY relevance compared to Phrase as all search terms MUST contain all words in the keyword. If Phrase shows you 10 relevant keywords, Broad Modifier will show you 25 equally relevant keywords. It’s just superior. Why would you even use Phrase? Want an example?

Product: Disposable Bamboo Cups For Kids

Keyword: “bamboo cups”

Phrase Match:

• cups bamboo  (rearrangement)
• bamboo toddler cups  (new word in the middle)
• toddler cups bamboo  (rearrangement)
• bamboo disposable cups  (new word in the middle)
• bamboo disposable cups toddler  (new word in the middle and left)

Same intent. But it ignores more than half the search terms.

Compare it to Broad Modifier now:

• cups bamboo 
• bamboo toddler cups 
• toddler cups bamboo 
• bamboo disposable cups 
• bamboo disposable cups toddler 

Here’s how you run it: Target the keyword in Broad but add a + sign before the words, like ‘+bamboo +cups’. You won’t show any search term that does not contain the word/words with a + sign before it/them. It’s basically, a controlled form of Broad match.

You can also be innovative and use it to advertise a certain intent. For example, ‘+wooden cable management box’. It will now show you ALL keywords (even synonyms) like ‘wooden power strip box’ that have the word wooden in them. Can Phrase do that?

Exact Match

Its the worse match type unless you just want to burn a lot of money as it will be super competitive and you can only get limited traffic as it will only run on exact keywords.

HINT: Broad Modifier will often outperform all match types in competitive niches.