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Keywords never stop being the single most critical element of a successful PPC strategy.
Despite Google’s efforts to move away from keywords towards “intent” targeting, keywords remain the primary way of targeting users through search ads.
A lot is said and done about the keywords you should be targeting, but negative keywords are a crucial component of a successful PPC strategy that is often neglected.
Close to half of advertisers don’t even use negative keywords in their campaigns. If you fall into that category, this simple mistake could be costing you hundreds or even thousands of dollars every month.
Negative keywords help you save your budget by removing costs from irrelevant keywords. In doing so, they also refine your targeting to ensure that only the people you want to target are landing on your website.
This discussion will look at the differences between these two types of keywords. We’ll explore negative keyword examples and how you can use them to maximize your PPC ROI. Let’s get started!
Search ads rely on keywords to determine who sees your ads. Your keyword selections inform Google that these are the searches you want your ads to appear on because they are relevant to your business and its products.
Google takes your keywords and matches your ads to user searches that its algorithms determine are relevant to your targets. Unfortunately, Google’s algorithms aren’t always correct.
The default match types that Google uses to connect your keywords to search terms are very open to interpretation. This can result in some interesting interactions.
Imagine that you’re an electronics store advertising for different types of computer mouse. You may attract clicks from people looking for a four-legged new friend instead.
Similarly, if you’re advertising for a bicycle shop, you may need to tell Google not to show your ad messages to audiences searching for motorbikes.
People who click your ads after these searches will quickly discover that they are in the wrong place and return to the search engine results page.
However, you’ve still paid for the click. These negative keyword examples help demonstrate why it is vital to your budget that you remove these irrelevant searches from your targeting.
Positive keywords tell Google when you want your ads to show.
Negative keywords tell Google when you do not want your ads to show.
There are several advantages of using negative keywords.
As mentioned, there is a positive impact on your budget. Removing clicks from bad keywords ensures that you are only paying for relevant traffic to your pages. This includes:
With more focused targeting, you’ll only advertise on relevant search pages. These are search terms that you’ve determined are very pertinent to your products and services. This means more clicks and relevant traffic arriving at your site prepared to convert.
With higher CTR and conversions and better allocation of your ad budget, increasing your ROI is guaranteed.
Some advertisers don’t use negative keywords because they feel they can achieve the same targeting with exact match keywords. This is technically true. However, it is far from the most efficient method.
The other reason that only using exact match keywords is a flawed strategy is that it limits your targeting to only the words that you know are valuable. This could be shutting you off from relevant and valuable searches that are not on your keyword list.
Through negative keywords, you can weed out ones that aren’t worth targeting. In turn, this enables you to develop tighter ad groups and stronger, more specific ads.
You can begin using negative keywords before your campaign is even launched. This is a very proactive approach to negative keyword planning.
You can find pre-campaign negative keywords through simple brainstorming and research. You can develop a very basic list of irrelevant searches that may trigger your ads.
Then, set those negatives before you launch your campaign. This saves you money on wasted clicks right out of the gate, which can be exceedingly helpful to a new campaign.
Once your campaign is live, you want to revisit your negative keyword research again. Look at your search terms report to see the actual searches where your ads have appeared.
You should be able to identify additional negative keyword examples to add to your exclusion list. In particular, look for keywords with high impressions but low clicks.
Your positive keyword research is an ongoing process. You’re always on the lookout for new searches that are rising in popularity.
This is the same approach that you should use with your negative keywords. All keywords can change in performance! You should perform both types of keyword research weekly, or even daily!
Pay attention to your Google Ads data for significant dips in conversion rate or Quality Score. These metrics indicate ads are being shown to irrelevant search audiences.
When you add positive keywords to your campaigns, you may have noticed the negative keywords tab.
Adding negative keywords works very similar to positive ones. Negative keywords can be added to the campaign or ad group levels.
Campaign-level negative keywords remove these search terms for the entire campaign. Ad group negative keywords allow you to get a little more specific with your exclusions. This method will only eliminate these search terms for individual ad groups.
Most negative keywords are added at the campaign level. However, you may have some keywords that you should exclude from certain ad groups within that campaign.
Using negative keywords for individual ad groups will further ensure that your site traffic is going to the most relevant pages on your site based on their search query.
Example: Sam runs a kitchen appliance business. He has a Google Ads campaign for electric kettles.
Since Sam’s business doesn’t offer any extended warranties or repair services, he places keywords like “warranty,” “fix” and “repair services” to his negative keywords list at the campaign level.
Sam’s electric kettles campaign has multiple ad groups for different types of products, such as cordless electric kettles, adjustable temperature kettles, stainless-steel electric kettles, portable electric kettles, etc.
Sam may choose to exclude certain keywords from one of these ad groups because it is not relevant to that type of product.
For instance, words like “copper” or “plastic” aren’t helpful when users are searching for a stainless steel kettle. However, these keywords are still relevant to the campaign as a whole.
Match types help determine how strict or loose Google Ads can be with showing your ads to audiences. You should be familiar with match types from your positive keyword planning.
For your negative keywords, these match types work slightly differently from their positive counterparts. The main difference is that even the negative broad match type is fairly restrictive.
If you want to exclude synonyms, misspellings, plural or singular versions of the same keyword and other close variations, you need to add each one manually.
This is the default setting for all keywords you add to your negative list. Broad match for negative keywords means that your ads will not show if the user’s search contains all of your negative keyword terms. This includes if the words are in a different order. Your ads may still show if the search only consists of some of the words.
If your negative keyword is “blue armchair recliner,” your ads will not show when someone searches “armchair recliner blue” or “recliner armchair blue for cheap.” Your ads will display when someone searches “blue armchair that reclines” or “armchair recliner.”
Phrase match is the same as broad match negative keywords, except that the words have to appear in the same order. The search can include additional terms.
If your negative phrase match keyword is “kitchen pots and pans,” your ads will not show when someone searches for anything that includes the phrase “kitchen pots and pans.” If, however, someone searches for “kitchen pans and pots,” Google may still show your ads.
Your ads won’t show if the search contains the exact phrase or keyword you entered and in the order that you entered. However, your ads may still show if the search includes the keywords in a different order or with extra words.
If your negative exact match keyword is “goldfish food,” then your ads will not show when someone searches “goldfish food.” They will still show if someone searches “cheap goldfish food” or “food for goldfish.”
As mentioned throughout this guide, there are several ways you can identify negative keywords.
The most accurate method is to look at your Google Ads data and look for keywords with low performance. These are typically the search terms that are farthest removed from the products and services your business offers.
There are also certain types of keywords that should be considered for your negative exclusion list.
A keyword doesn’t necessarily have to be irrelevant to land on your negative list. You may find that some keywords just don’t have enough conversions or conversion value to be worth the cost of the click.
Removing these poor performers will not only preserve your budget for more valuable targets, but will also improve your Quality Scores and your overall account performance.
Like poor performance terms, you may also choose to exclude overly expensive keywords with your negative list. Even though these terms may be providing results (clicks, conversions, etc.), the cost per click may be too high.
Overspending on these keywords could be drying up your budget quicker than you intend. This limits your ability to maintain ads throughout the month. It may be a better use of your budget to target cheaper keywords that still provide similar results.
You may offer a variety of different brands for the same type of product. There may also be some brands that you don’t sell. The branded keywords for companies that you don’t sell should be considered for your negative keyword list.
For instance, if you’re an electronics store that only deals with Microsoft products, then search users looking for Apple computers aren’t relevant to your site. Thus, it may be a wise, budget-saving move to include Apple-related search terms in your negative keyword list.
If you’re running a Google Ads Display Campaign, you can still benefit from negative keywords. In this scenario, excluded keywords are treated as topics.
Even if a website doesn’t include the exact keyword or phrase you’ve excluded, your ads may still not appear there if the topic of the content is strongly related to an item on your negative keyword list.
Competitor keywords are essentially your competitor’s branded keywords. These are the keywords that a search user might enter to find your competitor’s products and services.
It’s often wise to exclude these from your targeting for the same reason that you want to remove branded keywords that you don’t carry. The people that are searching directly for your competitor’s products may not be interested in a substitute.
That said, some businesses find value in advertising for their competitors’ keywords. Even though they may not draw a lot of relevant interactions, it’s an opportunity to drive customers away from the competition!
It’s wise to test competitor keywords for your own campaigns and see what results you get!
It’s easy to know how to use negative keywords. Knowing when to exclude search terms via the negative keyword list is the real question.
Some keywords are obviously not relevant to your products. Yet, other keywords fall into the low performance or overly expensive groups. These can be harder to detect.
To start, you can ask three critical questions:
When a keyword has a low CTR, it generally means that searchers see your ad, but aren’t triggered to click. You could fix this by revising your ad copy to make it more compelling or creating a new ad group to create a more relevant ad.
If that doesn’t work, it may simply be a keyword that isn’t relevant enough to your business.
Keywords with high impressions and low clicks aren’t necessarily a bad thing. You’re at least getting visibility for your brands and products on the search results pages.
The problem is that low CTR can bring down your Quality Scores. That free visibility likely isn’t worth the dip in your quality ratings.
If a keyword has a below-average conversion rate, it means that search users are clicking on your ads, but not converting.
This could be a problem with your landing page. It may not be relevant enough to the ad copy. Thus, customer expectations are not being met when they arrive at your site. Updating your landing page experience may remedy the problem.
That said, keywords with low conversion rates can eat away at your budget. Often, they aren’t worth the investment because the site traffic they create is not valuable to your conversion goals.
The problems with keywords that have high cost per conversion go hand-in-hand with terms that have low conversion rates.
Again, it’s a matter of paying for lots of clicks, but experiencing very few conversions. The more clicks a keyword receives, the higher your costs. When you’re receiving lots of clicks but barely any conversions, it increases your cost per conversion.
You want to find queries with high CTRs and cost per conversion values because these ads do little but cost you lots of money. By adding these queries to your negative keyword list, you can save your budget for search terms that produce positive results.
Keyword tools are very useful to marketers. They offer several features to help you discover keyword ideas and build a successful keyword strategy.
There are plenty of keyword research and planning tools available to Google Ads users. Google even has its own keyword planner!
Yet, many of these tools are focused only on discovering positive keyword opportunities. PPCexpo Keyword Planner, on the other hand, understands that a successful PPC strategy needs both positive and negative keywords.
PPCexpo Keyword Planner Tool gives you hundreds of relevant keyword results for every search you make. Plus, the tool offers actionable data about each possible keyword, including search volume, estimated CPC, opportunity and more. It’s an excellent tool for finding negative keywords!
Throughout this guide, we’ve discussed many of the benefits of managing your negative keyword list: saving money, higher CTR and conversion rates, better keyword targeting, etc.
Marketers should invest in PPCexpo Keyword Planner to help them capitalize on the advantages of having a thorough keyword strategy.
Not only can you discover new, positive keyword opportunities for your campaigns, but PPCexpo Keyword Planner also helps you analyze keywords for risks to your budget and account performance. These are the search terms that should be excluded.
PPCexpo Keyword Planner lists prospective keywords in the order you choose, whether search volume is most important to you, relevance, estimated CPC or a combination of metrics. You can even filter keyword suggestions by these metrics.
For example, if you only want to see potential keywords with 1,000+ search volume and an estimated CPC of less than $0.75, you can set the sliders to fit these parameters. This will filter all of the terms that PPCexpo Keyword Planner shows to only include targets that fit this profile.
You can use these same metrics to locate negative keywords with high CPC values or low relevance.
Effective negative keyword management is vital to running successful PPC campaigns. It keeps your keyword targets clean, optimally relevant and free of wasted spend.
Whether you have a tight budget or a large one, reducing wasted spend is a top priority. When you reduce spending and focus your efforts only on valuable keyword opp ortunities, you maximize your ROI.
That’s something that any PPC manager can get behind.
If you want a leg-up on finding negative keyword examples, PPCexpo Keyword Planner can be a helpful tool. It’s loaded with features that other keyword tools don’t offer. This makes it the perfect solution for optimizing your entire PPC keyword strategy!
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