Why "Negative Keywords" Are Critical to Google AdWords Success

Getting your AdWords campaigns seen by more prospects is a good thing, unless those prospects have very little chances of becoming customers.

That's where negative keywords can help.

Negative keywords instruct AdWords not to display your ads with specific search queries. They follow all the same rules of your standard keyword lists, meaning you can specify broad-, phrase- and exact-match negative keywords.
The only difference is you're filtering your audience rather than growing it.
If you're new to search advertising, you may be asking: "Don't more eyeballs on your ads eventually lead to more business on my website?"

Not always. Especially if you're showing your ads to the wrong people. Rather than get more conversions, you're likely to see a declining click-through rate and a rise in costs per click and end up paying more than you need to.

But fear not. By the end of this article, you'll understand the power of negative keywords and how to use them in your AdWords account. And more good news - you'll likely see an immediate boost in your conversion rate after implementing negative keywords.

What Exactly Are Negative Keywords?

Imagine you're launching an AdWords campaign for a hair salon. Your keyword list contains the phrase-match term "haircut" to make sure your ads are seen by folks searching for all kinds of haircut-related terms. But after a week of running ads, you realize a good portion of your clicks are from people searching for "dog haircuts," and not one of these people has visited the salon.

Clearly, this is a problem - but an easily fixable problem. Just go to your negative keyword list in AdWords and add the broad-match keyword "dog." Immediately, anyone searching for any variation of "dog haircuts" won't see your ads.

Then you can be proactive and take it a step further. Add "pet," "cat," "grooming" and other pet-related terms to your negative keyword list.  That will prevent your ads from showing for irrelevant search phrases.

How to Create Negative Keyword Lists

Building a negative keyword list is easy. You can do it at either the campaign or ad group level, and you'll end up using both options as you get more comfortable with using these keywords.

In scenarios like the "dog haircut" example above, a campaign-level negative keyword list would make more sense considering no part of the business caters to pet haircuts. If you're building campaigns for a multi-faceted business, then you may find ad-group level negative keyword lists to be more beneficial.

To create a negative keyword list, log into AdWords, click the Keywords tab and then click the Negative Keywords tab. Then simply add your negative keywords to either the "Ad group level" or "Campaign level" tables.

Benefits of Using Negative Keywords

Earlier in this article, we discussed why you need negative keywords for your campaigns to be successful. Now we'll go deeper into how negative keywords can help.

#1: Weed out shoppers looking for discount prices.

Online shoppers often search for discounts, coupons, free trials and other bargains. But what if your business doesn't offer discounts or coupons?
Bargain-hunters who click your ads are more likely to bounce if they don't find those deals.

If your business doesn't offer any discounts or coupons, you can eliminate this problem by adding "discounts," "coupons" and "free" to your campaign-level negative keyword list.

#2: Get the biggest bang from your ad budget.

Negative keywords filter out people who are most likely to click on your ads without becoming customers of your business. If you cut out those clicks, then you're instantly saving money! And if you don't trim your ad budgets, then you're essentially reinvesting that money to attract other prospects who are more likely to become customers. The result is more traffic with higher conversion rates, which means more profits without spending more money.

#3: Focus on buyer-oriented keywords.

Earlier, we mentioned how negative keywords can help prevent your ads from being shown to people who are doing research. This is important because folks who are researching goods and services are usually not ready to make purchases.

By adding keyword terms such as "compare," "what is" or "what are" to your negative keyword list, you'll immediately stop your ads from being shown to people who are most likely in research mode instead of shopper mode.

#4: Cut out non-consumers.

In addition to shoppers doing research before buying, some Web users who see your ads might not even be consumers at all. Consider again our hair salon example; in most cases, you wouldn't want your ads to be seen by unemployed hair stylists searching for "haircut jobs." Entering campaign-level negative keywords such as "jobs," "job openings," "careers," "part-time" and "internships" can keep your ads exclusive to consumers.

Conclusion

Negative keywords are often overlooked when you're just learning how to use AdWords. However, failing to use negative keywords can put a strain on your campaigns and drag down their performance, leading to frustration and unnecessary second-guessing. Always think carefully about negative keywords and use them with all of your new campaigns.

The good news is that even a few basic negative keywords can make a big difference. Just remember - success in AdWords isn't just about who sees your ads, but also who doesn't see your ads. Why waste money on clicks that don't convert? Fortunately, you don't have to.

Before You Quit Pay-Per-Click, Follow These PPC Tips

The thought of advertising your small business is both exciting and unnerving.  Many business owners are proactive when it comes to marketing their own business, using pay-per-click (PPC) advertising for instant results. When business owners try to handle their own PPC ,  they can spend  hundreds or even thousands of dollars on pay-per-click advertising  only to see little return on their investment.
Before you give up on PPC, consider the common mistakes that business owners make when managing their own advertising campaigns:

1. Having Unrealistic Expectations
2. Not Checking the Terms They are Actually Paying For
3. Not Adding Negative Keywords
4. Creating Ads Without Keyword Relevant Landing Pages

Having Unrealistic Expectations

Small business owners need to be broken out of the traditional advertising mindset.  For years, small business owners advertised on printed media, radio, and television. They are used to seeing and hearing their own ad constantly.  With  PPC advertising,  your ad will not be up 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Often, business owners will set up a PPC campaign, search their keyword, and not find their ad. When this happens, their first thought is, “Where is my ad? This is not working!” PPC is a lot different than traditional advertising.  You pay for performance.  
There are a few reasons why you might not be seeing your ad:

1. Your ad  might have already been clicked on a few times today. Once you reach your daily budget, your ads will stop running for the rest of that day.
2. You may be targeting too many keywords or not the right keywords.  In general, the more specific the keyword, the better the results. See my post on longtail keywords.
3. Your daily budget may be too small. If your spending less than $10 a day, your budget might not be enough to provide meaningful results.

Not Checking the Keyword Details (Query String Report)

When I have talked to small business owners that manage their own PPC, I was surprised to learn how few people actually use this. The keyword details are the actual search terms that you paid for. You can also think of this as keywords driving traffic.  Lots of valuable information can be found in this report. You can quickly see if you are wasting money or may see opportunities for new keywords. Hands down, this is my #1 PPC tip.
Here is how you can see the query string report:

Click on the keywords tab.

Select all keywords to see every search term that you paid for.

Click on view keyword details.

See which search terms are actually driving traffic. Notice that this list doesn’t exactly match your keyword list. Look for keywords that will never result in new business and add them as a negative keyword.

When you look through this report, you should ask yourself one question- could this search term result in business?
For example,  I was recently looking at a PPC campaign for a maid service company. One of their targeted keywords was “housekeeping.” I looked at the query string report and I saw that she had a lot of traffic coming from people searching for “housekeeping jobs.” The business owner was paying for this traffic and didn’t even know it. I also found something rather amusing.  One of the search terms was “arnold schwarzenegger housekeeper”. I am not sure why a person searching for this ended up clicking on an add for maid service; perhaps it was an accident. Anyways, after I checked the query string report, I added 71 negative keywords to this campaign. One was “jobs” and the other was “arnold schwarzenegger”. with the addition of negative keywords, the business owner does not have to worry about paying for these terms that will won’t result in a sale.

Not Adding Negative Keywords Every Month

This is somewhat repetitive to the step above, but it is so important I wanted to break it out into its own section.  Negative keywords are terms that you don’t want to advertise for.  This is almost as important as choosing the words you do want to advertise for.
Let me illustrate with an example. If you own a carpet cleaning service, you might have “carpet cleaning” and “cleaning service” as keywords. Without negative keywords, someone searching for “window cleaning service” might see your ad and call you to find out that you don’t offer window cleaning.  Not only is this annoying for both the customer and the business owner, it also eats up your PPC budget.
Many small business owners running their own PPC campaigns don’t create a negative keyword list.  PPC platforms like Adwords and adCenter are designed for anyone looking to get started ASAP. There are few requirements in the actual interface. You need a budget, some keywords, and an ad with a landing page.  Because negative keywords are not required, most small business owners don’t set them up. Adding negative keywords will make your campaign much more effective by spending your budget only on keywords that will drive  new business.

Creating Ads Without Keyword Relevant Landing Pages

One of the biggest mistakes is not having the actual keyword you are targeting on your landing page. For example, say you are an HVAC company. You have a home page that talks about your company with some marketing language about “why choose us.”  You want to advertise your business when people search for “Water Heater Repair In Houston,” but no where on your home page do you have those keywords in that order. This is like shooting yourself in the foot. If you want to get results for this keyword, this is how you should up your campaign:

1. Sign into Adwords and create a campaign. Set your daily budget and target your ads to be shown in Houston.
2. Create an ad group called water heater repair.
3. Add keywords specifically about water heater repair (water heater service, water heater not working, broken water heater, etc.)
4. Add negative keywords related to this service (jobs, etc)
5. Create ads specifically about water heater repair.
6. Create a landing page specifically about water heater repair using the keywords from step 3.

Follow the above tips to get the most out of  your PPC, increase conversions, and drive potential customers to your website. You’ll enjoy the boost to your bottom line that a properly executed PPC campaign can create!