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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!
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what do you do when there is a a sentence called
"This is a *** window washer"
do u still still display Ad?
Whether or not an ad displays is based on what's contained in the search query a user enters, and if incorporated, what's in your list of negative keywords. So if someone searching on live.com were to enter "window washer" by itself as their search query, the ads for the software and the residential/commercial service for clean windows would both appear and the user would have to review them to decide which is applicable to what they're looking for. If, however, they were to enter "window washer program" for their search and the window washer business owner had "program" as one of his negative keywords, his ad would not show amongst those for the software. Without including any negative keywords, his ads would continue to serve along side those for the software.
Make sense? :-)
The use of negative keywords can save you hundreds of dollars every month by preventing your ads from displaying for irrelevant searches.
Hinduja Interactive
www.htmtinteractive.com
How do you exclude an exact match keyword that is broad? For example, if I was bidding on "custom home" and "new home builder", but didn't want to bid on "homes" by itself?
Hello Lance.
Broad match triggers the display of your ad when individual words in your keyword appear, in any order, in a customer's search query. For example, your keyword red flower would match search queries that include red flower, flower is red, and other variations, and not just red or flower.
Broad match can expand to include words that are closely related to your keywords. For example, a search query for red carnation might result in your ad being displayed, because adCenter automatically identifies carnation as a type of flower. Use broad match to expose your ads to a wider audience.
Phrase match triggers the display of your ad if the word or words in your keyword appear in a customer's search query—even if other words are present in the typed query. Your keyword red flower would match searches for big red flower and red flower, but not yellow flower or flower red.
Exact match triggers the display of your ad only when the exact word or words in your keyword, in exactly the same order, appear in a customer's query. Your keyword red flower would only match searches for red flower, with no spelling variations. With exact match you might see fewer impressions (An ad that is served to and displayed on a user's browser.) but a higher click-through rate (The ratio of the number of times an ad is clicked to the number of times the ad is displayed.) , because your ad is shown to people who might be more interested in your product.
When you specify broad or phrase search match types for a keyword, adCenter can evaluate a keyword phrase in a customer’s search query to determine how closely related the individual words are to one another. For example, if the search query includes the name Bill Gates, adCenter will not display ads that have bill or gates as individual keywords because those ads are not likely to be relevant.
Negative keywords work only with keywords that have been assigned either the broad or phrase match type. They do not work with exact match keywords, because such keywords trigger the display of an ad only when a searcher uses the identical keyword phrase.
Unlike keywords, negative keywords cannot be assigned a match type. If your negative keyword appears anywhere in a search query, your ad will not appear for that search.
For example, if flower arrangement is a keyword phrase and red rose is a negative keyword phrase, the following table shows whether your ad would be displayed for various searches.
Search query Is ad displayed on search results page?
flower arrangement Yes
red flower arrangement Yes
rose flower arrangement Yes
red flower arrangement rose Yes
rose red flower arrangement Yes
red rose flower arrangement No
flower arrangement red rose No
flower red rose arrangement No
Character limits
Each negative keyword can contain up to 100 characters.