Keyword research is typically one of the most daunting tasks when it comes to creating a brand new PPC campaign -- this is especially true for advertisers who are new to search engine marketing (SEM).  Having the right keywords is crucial to success, but what about the "wrong" keywords? 

Some keywords can have different meanings depending on context.  If you don't have negative keywords listed in your campaign, it can result in your ad being triggered for queries that are not relevant to your products and/or services.  Having your ads show for these terms can result in a lot of unqualified traffic making its way to your site, driving up your spend for clicks that aren't bringing in sales.

You could spend hours trying to come up with terms that you don't want your ads triggered for, or you can let adCenter do the work for you!  Finding negative keywords is very similar to finding keywords you want to use, both processes start at the same place.

After you log in to adCenter, click on the "Research" tab in the blue navigation bar along the top of your interface:

On this page, you can search by either a keyword relevant to your business, or you can have adCenter scan your web site (or your competitor's web sites) to pull possible keywords for you to review:

When looking for new keywords, I would recommend doing both as each method can give you valuable insights when building out your final keyword list.  But when looking for negative keywords, the "Keyword" radio button is your best bet because it will take a generic, general term and will bring back related results... a scan of a relevant web site is less likely to turn up negatives because the majority of the content on that site is going to contain relevant terms.

To give an example, let's say you own a window-washing business.  If you choose the "Keyword" radio button in the graphic above and enter "window washer" as a keyword, adCenter will return the following results:

As it turns out, there's a downloadable program offered by Webroot called "Window Washer".  Since you wouldn't want your ad appearing when someone is looking for this computer program, you'd want to add negative keywords like "webroot", "free", "download" and "computer".  Doing so will suppress your ad from serving any time a user adds any of these terms to their search query. 

After you've searched on all terms related to your business and have a healthy list of negative keywords, you can add them so that they apply to your entire campaign by clicking on your campaign, then the "Edit campaign settings" link:

You can add negative keywords in the box located in the lower right-hand corner:

Follow the instructions to add your terms separated by a comma, click "Save" and you're done!