The evolution of digital marketing has developed rapidly over the years. Throughout growth in the industry, there is one thing that can be said for certain: If you don’t keep up you’ll get left behind.
For some businesses, traditional methods of marketing just aren’t enough to help them meet their goals. Pay-per-click marketing, however, has proven to be the way forward for many.
So why should we use Negative Keywords?
When you add negative keywords to your PPC campaigns, your ads will not be served if those words are part of the user’s search query. Adding negative keywords allows you to reach target audiences only.
Negative keywords play a crucial role in maximising the ROI of an AdWords campaign – they are equally as important as keywords. Despite this, research shows that almost half of advertisers on AdWords platform don’t add a single negative keyword to their accounts over the course of a month!
Negative keywords must be used with caution – a wrong move will divert all traffic that could be heading to your website! It is important that your keywords are relevant to the ads in your ad groups.
Remember! At the start of your Ad Words campaign, you will not be able to identify every negative keyword. You should run regular Search Query Reports in AdWords as this tells you the exact terms searched for which have caused your ads to show.
For example, if you were generating impressions for ‘car insurance’ when you only sell medical insurance, then you’ll want to add ‘car’ into your list of negative keywords as this is wasting your Ad Spend.
So what should you add as negative keywords?
There are some negative keywords that could be added to the majority of campaigns – for example…
- Jobseekers and those who are searching for training, so add negative keywords such as ‘careers’ and ‘training’.
- Generic terms such as ‘magazines’, ‘guides’, ‘news’, ‘examples’ etc.
- Weed out people hunting for a bargain by adding negative keywords such as ‘clearance’, ‘free’ etc.
- Software terms such as ‘downloads’, ‘code’ etc. (Be extra careful that these terms don’t apply to you!)
- You should also add negative keywords relating to adult/inappropriate content such as ‘X-rated’, ‘nude’ etc.
Do you add competitor’s brand terms as negative keywords?
This is different for every situation and you should make a decision based on your performance. If your competitors’ brand terms are generating conversions for your business, there is no need to label them as a negative keyword.
How To Differentiate Between Poor and Irrelevant Keywords?
Keywords that are not related to the products/services you sell must be added as a negative keyword they are irrelevant as you do not want to waste your budget on people who are looking for totally different products/services to what you offer. From the Search Terms Report, you may discover a keyword performing badly, this would be a poor keyword and you could add it as a negative keyword.
