Using Negative Keywords in Pay-Per-Click Search Engine Marketing

Tips and tricks to use negative keywords to save you money on Google AdWords and Yahoo Search Marketing.

By Lindsey Walsh SearchEnginePPC.com, Search Engine Marketing Consultant, SearchEnginePPC

First, we must know what a negative keyword actually is. Google notes that “A negative keyword is a kind of keyword that prevents your ads from showing on irrelevant search queries.” This means that you can not only define when your ads show up (using keywords), but also when they don't (using negative keywords).

Adding negative keywords to your search engine accounts can save you money, and help your pay-per-click campaigns perform much better.

This is one of the quickest ways to improve results on your Google AdWords or Yahoo Search Marketing campaigns. It can be one of those 'set it and forget it' deals, or you can aggressively add negative keywords to keep the savings rolling in.

Negative Keyword Examples to Get You Thinking:

- Car Sales: -lemon, -fraud, -auction, -complaints, -best time, -lease, -tips, -battery

- Book Sales: -text, -used, -rare, -audio, -review, -phone, -club, -address

- Business Insurance: -scams, -health, -car, -auto, -international, -agents

Don’t let you ads show up somewhere that would be harmful to your business!

If you sell airplanes, you certainly don’t want to appear on a page talking about a horrific plane crash. The same goes for a pet food seller and an article about the recent pet food poisoning incident. There are some things you can research ahead of time, but some may only come up with the winds of change.
Try: Stay on top of your brand name and topics related to your business using Google Alerts or Google Trends.

Pursue high volume traffic without the risk

Negative keywords allow you to go after high volume search terms without appearing for unrelated searches. If you appear for an unrelated search, your click through rate (and thus ad position and cost per click) can suffer. Plus you could be spending money on clicks that ultimately won’t convert because the searcher wasn’t looking for a product or service you offer.
Try: Research your highest cost keywords using Google AdWords' Keyword Tool. Choose 'Possible Negative Keywords' from the drop down menu to get their help in selecting negatives for your campaigns. You should come up with a list of at least a dozen possible contenders. Other options are: Yahoo's Keyword Research Tool and WordTracker (paid subscription).

Help focus your campaigns on your target audience

Make sure your keyword campaigns know your business as well as you do. If you’re a B2B company only focused on Fortune 1000 businesses, make sure to use terms like ‘small’ and ‘SMB’ as negatives in your campaign. If you’re a specialty clothing merchant only selling baby clothes, you may want to include keywords such as ‘womens’ and ‘mens’ as negatives.
Try: Continue your keyword research using Google AdWords' Keyword Tool. This time make sure to search using keywords that describe your business, not just the top volume terms. Also review non-direct competitors that may share your main search term but don't have the same business goals.

How to start using negative keywords on Google AdWords

AdWords is one of the easiest places to start using negative keywords. There are two versions you can pursue: Campaign negative keywords and AdGroup level negative keywords. Except in very specific cases, you can put all of your negative keywords at the Campaign level. Simply navigate to: ‘Edit Campaign Negative Keywords’ under the Tools menu to enter your keywords. To use AdGroup level negative keywords, you can type your keywords directly into the AdGroup simply by placing a negative sign (-) directly in front of the term.
Try: Don't wait another moment. Log into your AdWords account and get started right now!