Using AdWords Negative Keywords - How To Best Utilize Search Marketing Negative Keywords

The idea, in any marketing initiative, is to try to get your message to as many interested parties as possible.  You want hot leads and qualified clicks.  This will require you to weed your PPC garden.

In the coming paragraph, we'll lay out for you a system of generating highly effective "negative keywords."

negative keyword lists in AdWords

Google AdWords supports something called "negative keywords." This means that within Ad Groups, you can designate not only the terms you want to bid on, but also the variations of terms you don't want included in the basket of clicks that you'll pay for.

The Need for negative keywords in Search Marketing

If we go back to broad match, we can see where this could potentially be a really useful tool.  You can weed out the variations you don't like, right?  But Google doesn’t provide you with a list of the queries your ad is displaying for, or with a record of what people are clicking on when you opt for “broad match.”  So you have no idea what kinds of useless ads you’re buying, and here again we encounter the problem of scale.  How can a person even begin to approach listing off the seemingly endless, random number of variations that won't bring you the kinds of clicks you want?

using WordStream's negative keyword tools

You can easily add negative keywords at both the campaign level (keep them away from all of your Ad Groups) or the group level (ban a word or phrase from only one group within your overall campaign) with WordStream's negative keyword tools.

WordStream's negative keyword tools allow you to:

• Delete negative keywords - Remove a keyword from your WordStream database.
• Filter negative keywords - Set a negative keyword filter to ensure that a given term is never included in your account or bid on in your Ad Groups.
• Set negative keywords at the group or account level - Designate a keyword filter for your entire account, or only for a specific Keyword Group.

Because WordStream is continually generating new keywords and perpetually identifying the terms and phrases that perform poorly, creating a comprehensive list of negative keywords is a painless (and largely automated) process.

Learn More About AdWords Negative Keywords and Negative Keywords for Search

The above is an excerpt from the "Pay-Per-Click Search Engine Marketing Best Practices" whitepaper. To learn more about the keywords you should be advertising against, download the free whitepaper in its entirety today!