Look Out for Negative Keywords
17/01/2012
Negative keywords are an important part of your PPC campaign. These are keywords that you don’t want to be used in online searches to find your ad, so they must be taken into account.
This is particularly relevant with brands. For instance if you sell trainers, but don’t stock Reebok trainers, you want to list Reebok as a negative keyword so that this doesn’t show up in search when someone looks for ‘Reebok trainers’.
After all if you do include this keyword and someone clicks on your ad, instead of buying from your site they may leave and go directly to the Reebok official site. Therefore it is important to create a list of negative keywords as you don’t want to waste money on a click that is unlikely to convert.
There are several ways to find negative keywords. Google Instant, or the words Google predicts when you type something into search, can be harvested for use as negative keywords. After all these are the likely associations with your keyword, but some won’t be relevant and can be added to your negative keywords list.
The Keyword Tool can also be used in a similar way to find words associated with your product that you don’t sell and so they can be added to your negative keywords.
Your Search Query report in AdWords can show exactly what people have searched under to find your ad. If some of these words aren’t that relevant to your product range you can exclude them directly from this page.
These ideas provide a simple way of managing your negative keywords to ensure that you don’t waste money unnecessarily on clicks that are unlikely to convert. Cornish WebServices offer expert PPC management, ensuring that negative keywords are taken into account when defining pay per click ads.
