When it comes to managing your Google ad campaign, your goal is to target the people searching for your product or service. However, it is also a smart idea to make sure your ads are only showing to people that actually want to engage with you. Say you sell baked goods and are running an ad campaign for cupcakes. Now if someone is searching using the term “cupcakes,” they could be searching for “cupcake bakeries”, which is exactly the kind of person you want. However, they could be searching for “cupcake recipes”, which is not in your business’s wheelhouse. Showing an ad to this person is a waste of money because they are not actually looking for the product or service you provide and therefore are unlikely to click on your ad. So how do we stop this from happening? The answer is negative keywords.
What Is a Negative Keyword?
Keywords are one of the cornerstones of creating an ad campaign. Keywords tell Google what search queries you want your ads to show up for. Negative keywords are basically the exact opposite of target keywords. These are search terms you specifically do not want your ads to show on.
Benefits of Negative Keywords
Google defines negative keywords as “a type of keyword that prevents your ad from being triggered by a certain word or phrase. Your ads aren’t shown to anyone who is searching for that phrase. This is also known as a negative match.”
The value of negative keywords is in how they help to improve your return on investment (ROI). Negative keywords protect any business, but especially small and medium sized businesses with serious budget constraints, from wasting precious ad spend dollars on targets that have no interest in the kind of product or service you are promoting. By blocking your ads from showing for irrelevant keywords, you can focus your money on the target keywords that do bring in the most clicks, conversions or whatever other metric you are aiming to increase.
Finding Negative Keywords
The best ways to find negative keywords are brainstorming and looking at your search terms in Google Ads. Brainstorming the types of products or services that might be mistaken for your own can help you come up with a solid list of potential negatives. After you do that, taking a look at your ad campaign(s) search term report can help you identify queries that your ads have been showing for but do not match your business. You can also block searches that have an underwhelming click through rate (CTR) for how much your ad is showing for that search term. Having an experienced digital marketing team can also help you create and manage a cost saving list of negative keywords that ensure you are getting the most bang for your advertising buck.
Want to Know More About Negative Keywords?
Negative keywords are one of the pillars of any well-run ad campaign. An up to date and carefully crafted negative keywords list can save you hundreds if not thousands of dollars in ad spend. At JSMT Media, we have the experience and knowledge to construct a smart ad campaign complete with expertly managed negative keywords that will help your business flourish.
