Pay-per-click advertising has gotten more and more expensive as the masses have discovered the deep funnel benefits of reaching an audience who is actively searching for their products or services. With skyrocketing costs, every penny counts when optimizing your pay-per-click campaigns. You can’t afford to waste clicks on irrelevant traffic that is unlikely to take action or convert.
When we take over Google Ads or Bing Ads advertising accounts created by website owners or even other agencies, one of the first things we do is check for negative keywords. Typically, we won’t find any negative keywords at all and this is a huge swing and miss for these advertisers. Most people are familiar with keywords but many don’t even know negative keywords exist. When setting up a pay-per-click campaign, you can provide keywords you want people to search for when your ad is shown. These are commonly known as keywords, something everyone thinks about when adding a campaign. Negative keywords are the opposite. Negative keywords are keywords you DON’T want included in a user’s search phrase when your ad is shown. Having the right mix of negative keywords is nearly as important as having the right list of keywords because they allow advertisers to eliminate a lot of that irrelevant traffic. For example, you may be an attorney and you want to advertise for a phrase like ‘attorney in Seattle’ but if you add that phrase as a keyword, depending on your matchtype, you may also be showing for things like ‘attorney jobs in Seattle’ or ‘free attorney in Seattle’ and a variety of other terms that aren’t going to help you get the right types of leads. That is where negative keywords are a true lifesaver. They allow you to help control these search terms by providing a list of words you have no interest in ranking for so that when people make these searches, your ad doesn’t show up and you don’t end up paying for traffic that won’t lead to new business! This allows your budget to be deployed far more effectively and only on search terms that are relevant to the products or services you provide.
At Zipline, we create a lot of Google Ads and Bing Ads campaigns. To streamline the process, we have assembled a lengthy list of common negative keywords that will help get a new pay-per-click advertising account off the ground and on the right foot.
We have broken these into several groups and we made them easy to copy/paste into your campaign. When you are migrating these over, please take some time to look at the negative keywords to make sure they are indeed relevant for your application. Not every one of these is going to be a good negative keyword for every business, but they are a great starting place to help eliminate unwanted traffic and save you some serious money.
Negative Keyword Related to Education
training learn classes class school schools colleges college university universities books book tutorial tutorials video videos textbooks textbook guide guides become program programs institute institutes
Negative Keyword Covering Images
pictures picture pic pics photo photos images image diagram diagrams
Negative Keyword Targeting Intent
How to How do How does What to What do What does Where to Where do Where does directions sample samples sampler sampling map maps blog blogs example examples forum forums craft crafts diy homemade handmade make specs rental rentals repair repairs
Negative Keyword Covering Popular Platforms
craigslist facebook ebay instagram etsy youtube torrent Udemy
Negative Keyword Covering Pricing, Sales, and Discounting
free cost price pricing affordable no charge cost bargain bargains blowout blowouts cheap cheapest clearance clearances close outs closeout deals deal discount discounts liquidation overstock promo promo codes promotional rebate rebates bargain sale sales special inexpensive lowest warehouse outlet freemium freeware open source
Negative Keywords Targeting Conferences and Resources
journal journals magazine magazines club clubs conference conferences council councils newsletter newsletter resource resources seminar seminars statistics stats statistic workshop workshops association associations
Negative Keywords to Eliminate Research and Document Related Searches
review reviews rating ratings opinion opinions article articles information info manual manuals instruction instructions guide guides opinion opinions article articles study Studies documentation documents document
REMEMBER! Not all of these will apply to all businesses. Also, remember this is not an exhaustive list. You will want to review and edit these items to align with your products, services, and industry, but this is a great place to start for any business. If you begin your campaign with a collection of these words, you’re going to save a lot of money and get good results much, much faster.
One more important note is that Google only applies negative keywords to the first 10 words in a query. So very long queries still may break through. There isn’t much you can do about this but it is important you’re aware. Details: https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/2453972
Looking to get more leads online?
The Zipline team can help design and develop a website for your business that gets more leads and profit. By strategically aligning the website to your goals, we can help you do more with less. Contact us today to start the conversation.
