Are You Using Negative Keywords?

Negative keywords are one of the most powerful methods of Adwords optimisation available – yet so many campaigns we see don’t have any in them at all!

If you are using broad or phrase matches (see my post on this if you are not sure what they are), then you are not in full control over which keywords you are advertising under and which ones you aren’t. That’s not a bad thing, it’s actually a great thing because it means your campaign is being driven by what users type in and not what you think they type in.

Of course – the catch is that you are also end up having your ad shown for completely irrelevant search queries. An example of this would be a company advertising training courses that appears when people type in ‘train times’.

You might say – ‘well, who would actually click on my Ad if that happened?’. Well, people do click and your money does get wasted!

So this is where negative keywords come in. By running the Adwords ‘Search Query Performance’ report or, using the new interface, going to your keyword tab and pressing the ‘See Search Terms…’ button, you’ll be able to see the *actual* search terms that people have typed in to see/click/convert within your campaign.

From here, you can mark terms as Negative Keywords on an ad-group level so that your ads don’t show for such terms.

You can also mark search terms to be added into your campaign as bid-for keywords to give you more control over bid, ad text and landing page.

Negative keywords are an absolute cornerstone of Adwords success. If you aren’t using them then you are effectively paying for advertising space in completely inappropriate places…