Negative keywords play a vital part in the refinement of any Pay per Click (PPC) campaign. By identifying these irrelevant phrases and removing them from your advertising, you will lower the number of times ads appear for unrelated searches, helping to lower Cost per Click (CPC) and make that budget go further.
When you come to create a PPC campaign [See: What is PPC Advertising] impetuousness can cost money. It isn’t simply a case of identifying a few keywords that you want to appear for, writing a bit of ad text, turning on broad match and away you go. You have to be prepared to go deeper.
Broad match isn’t without its dangers, as discussed in my earlier post – The Danger of Broad Match in PPC Advertising. Whilst it gets you seen by a wider audience, it can also make a significant dent in your online budget. Effective Pay per Click advertising comes from controlled targeting of campaigns, not blanket exposure.
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Whilst exuberance to market your new website is understandable, your inexperience may be costly. Pay per Click advertising offers a great opportunity to attract targeted traffic, but it isn’t without its risks.
Broad match is PPC’s very own siren on the rocks. Whilst it offers you the tantalising treat of traffic, it could also leave your budget in a wreck. Within a well-optimised, closely managed campaign it can help expand your online visibility; unfortunately, for those who are just starting out, a budget can be easily decimated with very little return on your investment.
So what is broad match?
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Negative Keywords are used in Google AdWords as way of ensuring that adverts are not shown in conjunction with any of the keywords in your negative keyword list.
For example if you were a company selling IPods the keywords “Free” would probably be a negative.
More here: Negative Keywords Produce Positive Results
I mentioned in my 11 Tips To Improve Your Google AdWords Campaign (point #11!) that you need to run the Search Query report if you’re bidding on broad match keywords.
To access this report, you need to log in to your AdWords account, select the ‘Reports’ tab and then go to ‘Create Report’ in the sub-menu.
Search Query Report within Google AdWords
The reason we put so much importance on the Search Query report is because it uncovers some* of the actual keywords that AdWords has used as synonym replacements for those PPC advertisers using broad match.
*Whilst it shows some, it also misses a lot. Depending on how many clicks you put through your account, these ‘Other unique queries’ that appear in your report, could add up to a lot of wasted spend. It is possible to identify these keywords too but that involves setting up some advanced filtering in Google Analytics. We do this for all of our clients and their campaigns benefit from this further optimisation.
So why is it important to identify the actual search term rather than the phrase in your account that generated the click? Negatives! Running a successful AdWords campaign is a juggling act between maximising visits to your site whilst restricting wasted clicks, i.e. those searches that still click on your ad even though there’s no or little relevance to what they were looking for. This is where negative keywords come in. Negatives are added to your campaign and are used as a way to tell the AdWords system that your advert should NOT be shown when this keyword is used, normally as part of a longer search string.
A mature campaign will have hundreds, if not thousands, of negative keywords but this takes time, comprehensive keyword research and a detailed analysis of your AdWords account data.
If you’d rather spend time managing other aspects of your business, you should review our AdWords management services and let us improve your return on investment.
There are many ways you can improve your Google AdWords campaign but using negative keywords effectively should be high on your list of priorities, particularly if you have no plans to out-source your pay per click to a professional search marketing agency such as Impact Media. More…
