03.03.07
Negative keywords, Excluded keywords why you need them
Google refers to them as negative keywords, and Yahoo refers to them as excluded keywords, but they both accomplish the same result.
Negative keywords are a way of filtering when your ads are displayed. If someone performs a search query that contains one of your negative keywords, your ad will not be served.
This is a good practice that usually lowers your cost per acquisition and increases qualified traffic. The reason negative keywords are necessary is if your using a Broad match in Google or advanced match in Yahoo, your ads will be served every instance the users performs a search that include the term.
For example, lets say that you are selling a specific Harry Potter book. As you can imagine there are thousand of search for Harry Potter, including the Harry Potter video game, the Harry Potter movie and other Harry Potter books as well.
The good news is that you can restrict a majority of those keywords that you don’t want to pay for by using negative keywords.
So how do you find a negative keyword? You can find negative keywords by using the Overture Keyword tool or the Google Keyword tool.
Here are instructions on how to add negative keywords to your Google Adgroups.
Click within an adgroup in Google. Once you’re in this adgroup click on the Edit Keywords link, not button.
Here you’ll see all your keywords your currently bidding for. Simply nagivate down to the end of the list and type the keywords you wish to be negative keywords and add a “-” sign in front of them.
For example, here is what an adgroup may look like.
Harry Potter book
buy Harry Potter book
-video game
-movie
-action figure
In the example above we specified three negative keywords, video game, movie and action figure.
Here are instructions on how to add negative keywords to your Yahoo Adgroups.
In Yahoo, nagivate down to the specific adgroup you wish to add exclude keywords. Once there, you will click on the Adgroup settings button located to the right of your screen. You want to select the tactical settings. To the right of this next page you’ll see an option to show exclude keywords. This is where you enter you exclude keywords in Yahoo. Please note that you don’t include the minus sign in front of the keywords.
Using negative keywords not only helps you increase control over the serving of your ad but it will also help to increase your click through rate (CTR) and that in turn will also increase your quality score with Google. Your conversion rates will go up because your ads will only be served for relevant queries. A word of caution though; be sure not to limit your exposure too much by the use of negative matches.
It’s important to note that should you discover your click through rate is NOT increasing and/or your conversion rate decreasing, then you need to review your negative keyword list immediately and make the proper adjustments.
Broad match excluded keywords negative keywords qualified traffic
