How To Effectively Use Negative Keywords In Campaigns

How To Use Negative Keywords In Campaigns

When it comes to successful PPC campaigns, having an effective negative keyword strategy is essential. When implemented correctly, negative keywords, save you a lot of money. It also increases your audience relevancy and improves click-through rates. In this article, we are going to discuss how to effectively use negative keywords in campaigns. Let’s get started!

Consider Running Regular SQRs

SQR stands for Search Query Reports in Adwords. As it is a slightly dated term, many newbie marketers might not be aware of it. SQR is one of the core essentials of an effective negative keyword strategy. It happens to tells you the exact terms that caused your ads to show. Therefore, from running SQRs regularly, you can find out which irrelevant terms your ads are showing for and weed them out.

Always Distinguish Between Negatives In Campaign and Ad Group Level

One can add negative keywords into their account at either the campaign or ad group level. Now, the trick here is to know where to place them. When it comes to broad sweeping terms for all the products or items you don’t necessarily sell, add them in as campaign negatives.

Try Using Negatives To Funnel Your Users To The Right Places

You can make great use of negative keywords by directing your audience to the right part of your website. It also helps in avoiding overlapping issues when it comes to redirecting users to a specific page via a PPC campaign.

Never Try Adding Too Many Negative Keywords At Once

When it comes to large accounts, adding too many negative keywords makes sense. Otherwise, generally, it doesn’t make sense to conduct huge SQR audits and bulk negative keyword uploads. You can always end up doing way more harm than good by adding in all
your negative keywords at one go. Also, remember that of your account tanks, you will find it extremely hard to pinpoint exactly which negative keywords happened to cause the issue.

Always Remember The Difference Between Poor and Irrelevant Converting

When it comes to relevancy, there are some keywords we might want to discard because they are completely irrelevant. For instance, it could be the names of the products you don’t sell. However, you must remember that at other times you might just need to add in some negative keywords because they have shown not to be converting in your account.

For instance, maybe you have found in your research that users who use specific phrases never convert. You can go ahead and list these in the negative keywords list. Now, remember that you need to be extremely careful of simply lumping these in along with your normal negative keywords. Alternatively, you can consider spinning them off into new campaigns as well. Just make sure those campaigns have lower bids and different landing pages.

This brings us to the end of our discussion on how to effectively use negative keywords in campaigns. Now, do let us know if you have used some of the above-mentioned strategies in your ad campaigns and what are your personal thoughts on the same.