So when it comes to Google Adwords, what's the big fuss about negative keywords? Why would they be at all useful for an Adwords campaign? And what are they anyway?

Ok, I think an example would be good here.

Let's say that I have a wonderful cure for insomnia, it's a hypnosis CD, and I start to advertise it on Google Adwords with the search term 'insomnia' -- makes sense, doesn't it. Yet I may find that after 100 clicks or so I haven't sold a single one. Hmmmm, why not I wonder.

Well, you see there was a film called 'Insomnia' in 2002 staring Al Pacino, Robin Williams and Hilary Swank -- so some of those searches would have been for the film itself ... possibly people looking for a free download or something.

Then there's the Faithless album called 'Insomnia' released in 1996 I believe -- so some of those searches would have been for the album, or even some album downloads.

Oh dear, not looking good, is it?

Then there's the ringtones of the track 'Insomnia' (again from Faithless) -- we wouldn't even want to compete with ringtones now would we :-)

Then we have the band called 'Insomnia' from Bedfordshire, England ... hey, you never know, it may be that these guys would be searched for, eh?

So there's four scenarios that wouldn't really match our own preferred outcome, but is it such a huge problem? Perhaps my hypnosis CD makes so much money that I can afford the low conversion rate.

Well, maybe. But perhaps the immediate solution that most people would opt for is to change the creative for the ad to put off those people who aren't looking for an insomnia cure, but are really looking for downloads or band info.

That may work to reduce our clicks, but that also has the effect of reducing our CTR (click-through rate) ... because our ad will continue to show for some of those irrelevant searches, but never be clicked on. And if our CTR falls too low, then we either end up paying $10+ per click, or the campaign gets dropped altogether. Not what we want at all, eh?

What we really want to do is stop the ad from showing for these irrelevant searches, and this is where negative keywords comes in.

First of all we can wipe out a lot of those searches from people who are looking for downloads -- whether it be ringtones or mp3s or movies.

-download

There, done.

What this does is add the keyword search term 'download' to the negative keyword list. Any searches that contain the search term 'download' will now mean that our ad won't show.

Hurrah!

We could also add -mp3 -ringtone -movie -film -dvd

Get the idea?

Now some of the negative terms you may not think of are things like:

-guide ... some people are searching for reports or guides. If you don't provide them, then don't match them.

-free ... ah, how much stuff can we grab from the Internet for nothing? Again, if you don't give it away, don't allow your advert to show when people search for 'free' stuff.

-affiliate ... always an interesting one. People want to sell products via affiliate sales, but then again, if you don't have an affiliate program, DON"T MATCH IT ... (are you getting the message?)

Now, sometimes we need a fool-proof method for setting up our negative search terms -- and by the way, you can add the negative term at both the ad level or at the campaign level -- usually I put the 'standard' negative search terms (e.g. the free, download, affiliate etc terms) at the campaign level, and then tweak it for the individual ads at the ad level.

So, how do we go about setting up our negative terms? Simple. Use any keyword suggestion tool that you have access to, whether it's the Overture/Yahoo Search Marketing tool, the Google Adwords tool, or one of the many expert packages that you can buy on the Internet, and run your usual search for keywords. But this time, each time you come across something that doesn't really match your desired campaign, guess what ... you've found a potential negative keyword term.

(I can see that the light-bulb has finally come on ... yes, when you carried out all that research at the start of your campaign you could have saved all those negative matches!)

Once you've compiled your negative keyword list, you need to go through it and weed out all the common terms. For example, having "download mp3" and "download ringtone" in your list could both be covered by the common term "-download" ... make sense?

So there you go. Negative keywords in a nutshell. Not so difficult after all, was it.

© Copyright Howard Sandford, Fast Improvement 2006 - all rights reserved

Howard Sandford usually takes the hype out of those Adword Gurus at The Adwords Miracle Guide. Alternatively, if you are an ambitious affiliate getting nowhere, try Project X Exposed and learn something new ...