In PPC advertising, negative keywords are ones which prevent your ad from being triggered. A simple example: say you’re running a campaign selling luxury jewelry and you have a phrase-match or broad-match on the word ‘engagement rings’. You might want to have the negative keyword “cheap” attached to the campaign so that your ad is never shown when someone searches for “cheap engagement rings”. This, in loosely knit PPC campaigns, is as close as many people get to interpreting the searcher intent of their incoming traffic. A great deal can be done on the positive site, but in many cases, a great deal is still left to be done on the negative side. First, let’s look at a handful of ways that you can delve deeper into who, exactly, your PPC campaign is attracting.
Find out what you’re already paying for:
The obvious:
- Inventory software
- Inventory management software
- Business inventory software
- Inventory control software
- Inventory software free
- Home inventory software
- Small business inventory software
- Pc inventory software
- Manufacturing inventory software
- Bar code inventory software
- Web based inventory software
- Inventory software download
You know your product: does it run on a PC? Is there a free version or trial? Is it applicable to small businesses? Does it integrate with bar codes? Is it web based? Used at home? Downloadable? Almost half of the most popular phrases that a broad match bid on “inventory software” would trigger might not even apply to your offering.
Product search engines with suggest features:
In the world of product marketing you can use any site that categorizes or suggests things for you based on your root keywords to find more potential negative matches. A good example of this is the Google product search. Search for your short-tail words, then scroll to the bottom of the results page, where you’ll see suggestions and brand names:
Once you have a short list, expand it:
The techniques above will help you get started in creating your own personal ultimate negative keyword list, but don’t rely on computers to guess what human searchers might do — go over your basic list and start to expand it logically, with synonyms, different forms of words, and phrases, misspellings, and whatever you can think of. For the concept “cheap” for instance, you could build out a list like this:
- bargain
- cheap
- clearance
- close out
- close outs
- closeout
- closeouts
- discount
- discounted
- free
- inexpensive
- liquidation
- odd lots
- overstock
- remainder
- remainders
- freebie
- complimentary
- complementary
- complimentry
- complementry
- offers
- gratis
- irregular
The above list is actually an amalgamation of two that I found previously published, one by Jennifer Slegg, and one by Andy Komack. Andy has written before on the subject, and has actually authored one of the most informative and useful posts on the topic yet put together, where he simply gives away his negative keyword seed lists. In that post Andy does a great job of showing how different styles of keyword lists can apply to different accounts, or even different parts of the same account. He reels off lists to help you avoid job seekers, avoid knowledge/reference/stats seekers, bargin hunters, price shoppers, DIYers and gives great lists for those selling commercial software, in the manufacturing arenas, in law and in business to business environments. If you’re having trouble getting your list started, just read through Andy’s post. Keep in mind that when you include a word as a negative, such as “web” Google Adwords will exclude all ads with the word “web”, you don’t need to add additional negative keywords for “web based”, “web enabled” ect. So start adding some negatives – it’s a direct, uncomplicated path to ROI.