Don't Ignore the Negative
A comprehensive approach to negative keywords for Google AdWords.
A comprehensive approach to negative keywords for Google AdWords.
AdWords managers at all levels can benefit from reviewing their negative keyword strategy. Negative keywords serve to keep your ads from showing on certain queries. Without them, you can waste precious PPC click budget on irrelevant traffic.
Over the years, I have assumed management on dozens of PPC accounts, and have observed various states of negative keyword implementation. PPC managers spend a great deal of time on keyword generation and optimization, but sometimes integration of negatives includes only the basics, or worse – no negatives at all!
Just as keyword match types help to control your ad showing for relevant queries, the negative keyword helps by holding back your ads when the search is not relevant. This is particularly important when we need to broad match keywords to capture the most search traffic. Google will expand broad match keywords by matching with “variations,” often making them too broad.
A comprehensive negative keyword approach has two phases:
Generating a Starting Negative Keyword List
Generating Negatives Over Time
Query reports. Google provides query reports that show real users search terms that triggered your ads to display. In the keyword tab, use the “see search terms” button to see keywords for any given ad group or campaign. From here, you can check keywords you want to use as negatives and click the “Add as a negative” button. You will have the option to customize how you want to implement the negative, match type, and at the campaign or ad group level.
Since these keywords come directly from user queries, this report provides invaluable, up-to-date information on searcher intent and behavior. You should be exploring the opportunities in this account weekly, if possible.
Again, think carefully through your overall PPC strategy before adding too many negative keywords. Keeping some less-relevant keywords may be part of your strategy if they send traffic and you don’t mind paying for them.
Having a solid starting list is critical, and by continuously adding keywords over time from your reports, you will likely see the click-through rate steadily improve as they become more relevant. This in turn can increase your Quality Score with Google and conversions with searchers.