A Beginner’s Guide To Negative Keywords in Adwords Management

 

You may be familiar with the comedic banter of discovering the most interesting of negative keywords in your Adwords campaign or you might be generally curious on steps you can take to skyrocket your Adwords management. Whether a beginner or advanced this blog will give insider tips to increase performance on any account.

To begin, negatives are keywords or phrases containing 10 words or less that advertisers add at the account or campaign level to exclude irrelevant or less interested searchers. Negative keywords can be added as [exact match], “phrase match” and +broad +match types.

How To Find Negatives In Google Adwords:

1. Log into the Adwords client account in question.
2. Make sure that All Campaigns is selected in the left navigation panel.
3. Next click ‘Dimensions’ located in the top navigation tabs.
4. Click on ‘View:’ and in the drop down select ‘Search Terms’

– Search terms are search queries actual customers have typed into a Google search. These search queries trigger your keywords and return your advertisement.

5. Next, click on ‘Columns’ and ‘Modify columns..” according to which key performance indicators you will use to judge each search term.

– Sample Column Layout: Impressions | Clicks | CTR | Avg. Pos. | Converted Clicks | Cost | Cost/Converted Click | Total Conv. Value | Conv. Value/cost.

6. Click the download button (Located next to columns).

7. Once downloaded there are several ways you can filter through these search terms to find negatives:

– Sort by impressions descending looking for any search terms with at least 100 impressions.

– Sort by any search terms that have low click-through rates of less than 1%

– Sort high spending search terms that may be monopolizing the campaign spend.

– Sort by conversions based on the cost and decide if a search term’s cost per converted click is too high.

– Look briefly through the entire list to see if anything stands out that you can add as phrase match.

How To Add Negatives in Google Adwords:

1. Log into the Adwords client account in question.
2. In the left navigation click ‘Shared library’
3. Then under Campaign negative keywords click ‘View’
4. Once directed navigate to ‘+ List’ to add a new negative keyword list.
5. Be sure to name your keyword list something very descriptive, including a date that you will update every time you add new negatives.
6. You can then enter your negative keywords one per line. (It is easiest to copy and paste bulk lists from excel).
7. Then hit ‘Save’
8. Lastly, click on the new list you just created to view your added keywords. Scroll past your keywords and click ‘Apply to campaigns’. This is where you can choose which campaigns will share this new negative keyword list. (Note: If you intend to add to all campaigns you will need to scroll down to the bottom of the scroll box and click ‘Load Next #’, you can then click the blue arrows next to Campaigns: # to add all at once.)

DigiMar Adwords Management Agency Client Example:

Client Abstract: Client is a retailer of restaurant and commercial furniture from booths to table bases and chairs.

Prevalent Search Terms:

kids metal chairs

metal kids chairs

farm commercial kids chairs

kids table covers for restaurants

kids restaurant furniture

kids restaurant furniture

Outcome: “kids” was added as a phrase match negative as the retailer does not offer consumer kid-focused furniture.

We would love to help you add negatives as part of your Adwords management – Please contact DigiMar Digital Marketing Agency to jumpstart your Adwords Account today.

 

[/mp_span] [/mp_row]