You’ve probably heard many times that keywords are key to ad success. Poorly chosen keywords in your Google ads campaign mean that your ads won’t give you the desired return on investment. However, choosing the right keywords isn’t enough.
Avoiding the wrong or so-called negative ones is equally important. Many companies aren’t aware of negative keywords and end up wasting money on their PPC campaigns. Their ads show in irrelevant keyword searches.
This means that they get new visitors but not the ones they want to attract. It’s a waste of money and potential. Is this your problem too? It can be easily fixed but you should act now. Don’t forget that every click costs you money!
Implementing negative keywords as a part of your Google advertising strategy will help you stand out in the right Google searches. We’ve written this blog post to help you get a better understanding of how to maximise your results by using Google ads negative keywords list.
What Is a Negative Keyword?
A negative keyword, also commonly referred to as a negative match, is a keyword you exclude from your advertisement campaign to avoid attracting the wrong audience. When you let Google Ads know what your negative keywords are these search terms do not trigger your ads.
Let’s have a look at a specific example. If your business sold cars and your campaign was to advertise “Jaguars” on your website, “animal” would be a negative keyword. While the word “animal” would also bring people to your website, this isn’t beneficial for you.
After all, you’re trying to attract those interested in cars and you know that the brand name may be ambiguous. As someone focused on Jaguar cars, you have nothing to offer to animal lovers.
What’s more, such traffic increases your bounce rate as mislead visitors don’t further interact with your website. High bounce rate has an indirect impact on your SEO. It’s quite obvious that the point of a paid ad campaign isn’t to negatively impact your website’s ranking.
Why Is It Important To Use Negative Keywords?
Yet again, using negative keywords will provide you with the opportunity to limit irrelevant traffic and focus on visitors who are likely to convert. It’ll also mean that the clicks you pay for aren’t wasted.
If this doesn’t convince you, there are several direct benefits related to the use of negative keywords: your PPC campaign can benefit from an improved CTR, a higher conversion rate, and a better quality score on Google AdWords.
How to Work with Negative Keywords?
Finding keywords that should be included in ads is a standard process these days. However, not many companies put the time into building a Google ads negative keyword list. This is worrisome but you should see it as a chance for your business to stand out.
Just like with a standard keyword list, a negative keyword list also requires you to conduct research. One of the tools that can be very helpful here is the Google Keyword Planner. You can also choose to approach the negative keyword research reactively or proactively.
Reactive research means that you look through keywords that are currently triggering your ads to identify the ones that don’t serve you. Proactive research, on the other hand, is trying to anticipate the unwanted keywords your future ads could be triggering.
Especially, if your budget is limited it’s recommended to use both at the same time. For the best results remember also to organise your Google ads negative keywords list in groups of terms to avoid. This will make it easier for you to keep updating them.
When Should You Do Negative Keyword Research?
The negative keywords research has to be an ongoing process. You should do your negative keyword list research proactively before a campaign goes live and as the campaign is ongoing.
After your campaign you should shift your focus to reactive research. Remember to go through this process even if you’ve researched proactively. You need to be constantly tweaking your marketing strategies to get increasingly satisfying results.
A Better Understanding of Negative Keywords
To sum up, by identifying negative keywords to add to your Google ads campaign, you’ll save money. Creating a list of negative keywords to add to your campaign before it goes live is crucial to help interested customers in finding your website.
Keep in mind that not all negative keywords are industry specific. Some of them are universal and going through a list of them before you launch a campaign is a good idea. We’ve provided an extensive list of over 700 negative keywords to get you started here.
Don’t forget that the negative keyword research and lists are only a part of a successful marketing strategy. If your business isn’t performing like you’d like it to, let us help you with optimising your online presence. Contact us today and we’ll explain to you how we can help your business thrive!
