How to Find Negative Keywords
Posted by on January 11, 2009 07:03 PMWhen you input a normal broad match keyword into Google, buyer beware. It's important to always be aware that your ad may show for a wide-range of unintended searches.
Most of the time it doesn't matter. It's still worth it to bid on broad match keywords because the targeted traffic pays for the untargeted.
However, you can increase the profitability of your keywords by using the power of negative keywords.
If you're not familiar with them, negative keywords are those keywords you don't want your ads to show-up for. You input them into an account by putting a "-" before your chosen keyword.
For instance, you may bid on the term "traffic" as in "website traffic." However, you don't want your ad to show-up for "Highway traffic," "Traffic cameras," or driving related keywords.
By using these negative keywords your click-through-rates skyrocket (your ad only shows-up for those interested in it) and your cost-per-click shrinks.
Of course, you may be aware of this. But, you still struggle to come-up with good negative keywords. You don't want to exclude traffic that could be profitable and you don't want to waste your money either.
Before you start any campaign, the first technique to come-up with on-target negative keywords is to use any keyword research tool, such as Google's at:
Let's say we're selling a book on how to generate traffic to your website. Let's take a look at the very general keyword "traffic:"
Hit "Get keyword ideas."
Anything related to "Website traffic" is not found. So, we would not likely bid on this term. It's too untargeted. However, we might take some of these keywords and add them to our negative keyword list.
We don't want our ads to show-up for anything related to driving traffic. For instance, "traffic saftey website" or a similar search might potentially show our ad if we did not use negative keywords.
Let's take a look at a more targeted term "Website traffic" where we do want our ad to show for:
Here, we might add "Website traffic hits" as a negative keyword because it appears to be a phrase those willing to invest in a course on website traffic generation would not type-in. This term is more for those looking for low cost instant and massive "quick fix." Most folks likely to buy a course don't want just hits.
Another negative keyword might be "website traffic analysis." Folks typing this in are looking for an analytics tool they can install on their website.
Are you starting to see how this is done? For further information about a keyword, look at the competition data (the green bar to the right). Low competition means other advertisers may have already found out that the keyword is not profitable.
You can also search the actual term and see what listings pop-up. See if they're related to your product or service.
A neat tool provided by MSN that gives you an idea of whether a keyword has those likely to buy can also be found at:
Just type a keyword into this tool and it gives you a basic idea of how many folks are likely to buy. Keep in mind that just because a keyword does not have a lot of buyers, does not mean it's profitable to bid on. The buyers may make-up for the non-buyers. Every part of AdWords success is about tracking or knowing your numbers.
After you've researched your general keywords, you might go on to input each of your top keywords into the keyword research tool and look for untargeted search phrases.
This is a key part to starting your campaign off right.
As the campaign runs, you should be continually looking for new untargeted keywords. One strategy is if you find-out a keyword is not profitable through tracking, you may not just delete it, but also add it as a negative keyword.
You should also have some sort of tracking software, such as Google Analytics or a similar tool. These tools then have an area where you can see what search phrases folks found you with. If you see an unrelated search query, add it as a negative keyword.
One word of caution is that you want to make sure that when you add negative keywords that it is really untargeted. Test advertising on the keyword and tracking conversion rates if you need to.
By continually adding negative keywords you gain an unbeatable age new competitors can't match. Most won't put in the effort and the rest just don't have the data yet to uncover what their negative keywords should be.
great tips, thank you for sharing. Can you post more about building a quality keywords list?
Posted by: james | January 17, 2009 at 12:35 PM