You may have a refined list of keywords that provide conversions for you at a reasonably low cost, but do you have a refined list of negative keywords?
If you aren’t familiar, negative keywords make sure that someone typing that keyword is excluded from seeing your ad. Why would you want to exclude someone from your ad?
Imagine you are a shower company, and you make deluxe shower stalls for high-end homes in Vancouver. You decide “Hey, I think I’ll bid on the keyword ‘shower’, because we sell showers!”.
All good and dandy so far, right?
And then someone searches the term “meteor shower”, and triggers your ad because you were bidding on the keyword “shower”.
Uh oh! We have a bit of a problem here, because that person doesn’t care about home-showers at all! They clearly just want to find out more about meteors and how they soar through the night sky!
By adding the term “meteor” as a negative keyword, we can keep out anyone looking for meteor-shower related stuff, and your campaign becomes that much more targeted.
Does that all make sense to you? Do you now see how we might want to exclude some people from seeing your ad, because they aren’t the right fit?
Now that we’re on the same page, let’s get to adding some negative keywords in. When you’re just starting out, I recommend using campaign-level negative keywords.
Start with this Google guide to adding negative keywords if you’re not sure how to put them in your campaign.
Once you know the technicalities, you have one problem: “where on earth do I come up with negative keyword ideas?”
One way is to use the “search terms report”, which shows you the exact searches that someone made to trigger your ads. To learn how to use this report, go here and find the heading that says “Get negative keyword ideas” – expand that section and follow the instructions.
When looking through the report, look for any single-words that indicate that the search is irrelevant (such as our meteor shower example above). The more you spend time looking at these keywords, and thinking about the possible “search intent” behind them, the better you’ll get at creating negative keyword lists.
By excluding irrelevant keywords, you can increase your CTR, increase your quality score, lower your bids, and lower your cost per conversion. It’s really important to do this regularly, especially if you’re using broad-match keywords.
You can also use the dimensions tab to find more search terms for negative keyword ideas. Just go to Dimensions > View: Search Terms.
Select a date range, and you’re good to go. Add any new ideas you get from here to your negative keyword list.
Searching online is also a good way to find negative keywords. Just search your industry + negative keywords. That search might be something like:
“hair salon negative keywords”
Here is a sample list of negative keywords that are suitable for most small or local businesses at Whitespark..
No comment yet, add your voice below!