Paid advertising, when integrated into a well-researched and well-balanced digital marketing strategy, may be an excellent means of boosting your company’s profile, attracting new customers, and maximizing profits. You can reach a broader, more specific audience with PPC agency London and yield a high return on investment.
It is crucial to include keywords that will lead to conversions while also promising a higher Click Through Rate (CTR) to trigger people actively searching for the relevant keywords in order to deliver a successful paid campaign.
On the other hand, not every keyword is created equal. There will always be undesirable search terms that you don’t want to appear for. If we take a donut shop as an example, we can safely assume that they wouldn’t want to show up in the search results for a consumer trying to buy new running shoes, right? This brings us neatly to the topic of negative keywords, why you should use them, and how you can implement them to increase the effectiveness of your paid advertising efforts.
What are negative keywords?
With the help of negative keywords, you can block your advertising from appearing in response to searches for terms that have nothing to do with the goods or services you offer. As a result, you may target the most likely customers without blowing your cash on clicks, which won’t result in sales for your organization.
Knowing your audience well is crucial to the success of your campaigns, as it will determine how much of an impact your ad will have on the clickthrough rate and conversions. Your objective should be to maximize relevance and return on investment by bidding on the most appropriate keywords.
Different types of negative keywords
In Google Ads, you can utilize the broad, phrase, and specific negative keywords.
- Negative broad match: Your ad shall not show up if the search includes all the negative keywords irrelevant to the order in which they appear. If the search simply uses some of the terms, your ad may still be returned. All Google Ads accounts will automatically use broad matches.
- Negative phrase match: Your ad won’t appear if the query contains all the negative keywords if they’re in the same order as the negative phrases you’ve set up. Any number of terms may be included in the search, but the negative keyword must be used in the same order in order to filter out relevant results.
- Negative exact match: With a negative exact match, your ad won’t appear unless the query specifically includes the specified negative keyword. No further keywords may be included in the inquiry.
How are negative keywords different from standard keywords?
A properly targeted sponsored search ad can be created with the help of keyword targeting. If you’re paying per click, you want as many of those clicks as possible to come from high-quality prospects. In the same way, negative terms might have the opposite effect.
If you don’t want your ad to show up for searches that include a negative keyword, you can tell ad platforms (like Google or Microsoft Advertising) so.
Use the word “salsa” as a keyword if your business sells salsa, for example. However, anyone looking for “salsa dancing” or “salsa lessons” online are usually not interested in purchasing your wares. Filter out unqualified leads by making these “negative” keywords.
How to build your negative keyword list?
Negative keyword research should be done in the same way as regular keyword research, preferably before and during the launch of a campaign.
You should definitely choose some terms right away, such as “address,” “free,” and “login.” Google recommends looking through your search term reports for terms that are only superficially related. Are there any terms that stick out as negative keywords? Include them on your list.
However, before making use of search phrase reports, you should consider the categories of companies, products, and services that your brand could be confused with (like the salsa example above). Next, consider possible keywords that could be used to find them in a search engine.
Benefits of employing a negative keyword strategy
One could reasonably conclude that the ultimate goal of any company is to increase its number of paying customers by whatever means possible (i.e., by advertising and other means). By eliminating irrelevant search terms from your ad groups, negative keywords help enormously by raising your clickthrough and conversion rates. Spending money on paid campaigns is great, and all, but conversions are what really matter and lead to a positive return on investment.
By excluding non-relevant inquiries from your ad rotation, you may boost your clickthrough rate (CTR) and get more qualified traffic to your site. By directing marketing dollars where they will have the most impact, your company can cut costs and increase its ROAS (Return On Ad Spend).
Advantages of adding negative keywords to your PPC Campaigns
- Improve Click-Through Rate (CTR) — The CTR of your advertising will increase if you reduce the number of impressions served in response to irrelevant inquiries. This is because a smaller number of people will see your adverts before they decide whether or not to click on them.
- Create More Relevant Ad Groups — Improve the Quality of Your Ad Groups by Removing Non-Relevant Keywords Focus your ad groups on keywords that are directly linked to your business. Ads can be more effectively targeted when grouped into smaller, more manageable sets, where a single message can address all of the keywords in the set.
- Save Money — Saving money on clicks that aren’t relevant to your business is as simple as excluding searchers who aren’t a good fit. You won’t have to compete with yourself for impressions or dilute your keyword-level data by bidding against yourself.
- Raise Your Conversion Rate — You can increase your conversion rate by using negative keywords to prevent your advertisements from appearing in search results for phrases you know won’t convert, such as the names of your competitors or terms with no business intent.
Final thoughts!
As you can see, including negative keywords in your PPC campaigns can have a number of positive effects. This has two purposes: first, it helps weed out people who aren’t interested in your product or service, and second, it reduces costs by ensuring that you only pay for clicks from the people who are likely to become paying customers.
While you shouldn’t go overboard with keyword exclusions, you can ensure that your PPC campaign doesn’t target the wrong audience with some creative thinking and minor adjustments.
