Basketball legend, Michael Jordan once said, “Always turn a negative situation into a positive situation.” Absorbing the gist of this food for the thought, this is what Google’s Negative Keywords is all about.
Today, many expert internet marketing firms and online advertisers see this “negativity” as a great tool to somehow be at par with their competitors in terms of utilizing PPC for advertising their business online. Yes, we all know that this paradoxical tool significantly helps in eliminating unnecessary keyword searches for a particular online campaign. But deep down to the core, why the need for Negative Keywords? How will it benefit the campaign in terms of targeting the market, building a niche and be at par with their competitors? To give you an idea, here’s an in-depth look at Negative Keywords.
Negative Keywords as Defined and Reiterated
To answer the question, nothing! The reason for such name is that this tool is utilized to exclude irrelevant set of keywords that may be associated with your PPC campaign. When you create an AdGroup using Google AdWords, Negative Keywords act as a filter which prevents your ads from being triggered and showed when a customer types a search term using those specific words and/or phrases.
To site an example, say, you’re an electric guitars enthusiast and want to venture on selling Fender Stratocaster Guitars online; and since you ought to sell brand new “Stratocasters” only, it is an obvious given that you’ll need to include the words “ Brand New Fender Strat for sale”, “Stratocaster for sale” and “Fender electric guitar for sale” on your AdGroup.
In the same manner, to prevent your ads from showing to those customers, whom are searching for a secondhand electric guitar and rather use other guitar models/make online, you need to exclude the keywords, “Telecaster”, “Mustang”, “Jazzmaster” and “Jaguar”, as well as brand names like “Gibson”, “Ibanez”, “PRS”, “Jackson” or even “Acoustic Guitar” in your campaign by adding these terms in your list of Negative Keywords.
Two things are essential for knowing the ideal negative keywords for an effective PPC campaign. One is the use of broad match type from Google’s Keyword Matching Options. With this, you will be able to study, analyze and determine strategic terms and words potential customers often use when searching for an item in Google. Furthermore, the employment of Search Terms Report will also give you an idea on the performance of your ads based on the actual search terms used by the customer. We’ll discuss these two further in the near future.
Why the need to be “Negative”?
As you see, the World Wide Web has a very broad spectrum of information and what-not. And placing your ad online can be compared to a virtual needle thrown in a haystack. And one way to somehow clear the haystack is to sweep off some of the related words that may trigger your ad from appearing in the results.
That being said, Negative Keywords NOT only prevents your ads from showing in the search results everytime a customer inputs a search term relating to your ad, it also applies specificity when it comes to targeting your niche, giving them the exact search they need and look for, which eventually converts to (potential) sales. This may deem a downside for some, but when looking at it in an overall perspective, using Negative Keywords greatly helps in maintaining your PPC budget, as it deters unnecessary costs –usually caused by futile impressions/clicks from irrelevant searches.
What’s the negative impact of Negative Keywords?
Aside from the said “drawback” earlier, Negative Keywords may affect the traffic of your website. As Negative Keywords limits the appearance of your ad to search results, this will also sort a large chunk of visits to your website. Although, it is not such a bad thing, as there will be a much greater chance that the remaining traffic will be most likely the ones who will convert to sales.
Want to learn more about maximizing Negative Tools for your business? Please visit Cybertegic’s official website for consultation regarding the use of Negative Keywords in PPC campaigns for your online business.