Negative Keywords and your PPC campaign go hand-in-hand. It is close to impossible for your Google Ads account to function effectively without the use of negative keywords. There impact on overall performance is immense as it controls the unwanted clicks and increases the conversion rate.
For those who don’t yet fathom the importance of Negative Keywords, we will share the reasons which make it essential for marketers to incorporate them in their campaigns.
Negative Keywords are those insignificant keywords for which you would not want to show your ad. For instance if you run a ‘nursery’ and do not wish to show your ads for keyword such as ‘nursery rhyme’, you can add rhyme as a negative keyword. As a result your ad will not show whenever someone searches for terms such as ‘nursery rhyme for kids’ etc. How and when a query gets blocked depends on the keyword match type assigned to it.
Here’s a snippet from a post on Negative Keywords which suggests the following reasons for using negative keywords:
- Targeted Ads: While Google Ads makes it easy to start up and set up a campaign with a variety of keyword match options in your campaigns, using Broad, Modified Broad, or even phrase match keywords will require the use of negative keywords. When you use these match type ads, your campaign may show up as the result for keywords other than the ones that you typed in.
- More Reach: Match types other than exact match may seem difficult to work with, but they are critical to keyword research and targeting long tail search queries. Because people are constantly typing in new keyword combinations, trying to add every keyword combination ever would not only be time-consuming but very difficult to manage. The best compromise here is to combine the use of phrase, modified broad match, or phrase match with a long list of negative keywords to ensure that your ads make it to the people who need your services the most.
- Higher Conversions: The addition of negative keywords reduces the amount of inaccurate searches that your ads show up for. The increase in accurate search responses will give your campaigns a greater ROI and higher conversion rate, due to the fact that your company’s website is now only showing up for customers who are ready to purchase, and not in searches that have nothing to do with your business.
You can read the entire post here.
[Update as on September, 2019] – Exact match, broad match modifier and phrase match keywords now also match to words within the search query that share the same meaning as the keyword. This update makes it all the more important to keep a close tab on the search queries, identify the irrelevant terms and add them as Negative Keywords
To add on to the above points, we underline the following reasons:
- Save wasted ad spend: We at Karooya, have observed, based on our client’s experience that up to 20% budget is spent on traffic that is of poor quality. Using negative keywords makes sure that the unwanted ad spend is controlled. As it narrows down the relevant keywords and prohibits unwanted keywords from driving traffic to your business. So, basically you are not paying for visitors who are not interested in your business and whose chances to convert is minuscule. Not only does this step helps you in optimally managing your budget but also reduces the clutter of unwanted keywords.
- Redirecting to correct campaign : You might have observed that sometimes same search query can get matched to multiple keywords in the account. Using negative keywords ensures that the search query gets matched to the most relevant keyword and as a result relevant ad gets shown. Such a step not only improves the quality score but also increases the chances of converting the visitor, as his query has been met with the desired results.
As a business, if you haven’t yet given emphasis to the usage of negative keywords, the above mentioned reasons must have been an eye opener.
However, if you want further guidance over the usage of negative keywords you can take help from Karooya’s Negative Keyword Tool.
Note: Now, our Negative Keywords Tool is Free for accounts with ad spend less than $10,000 per month. Save 10-20% of your search ad spend for free.
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