A Complete guide to Google Ads Negative Keyword

Different from traditional marketing, the online marketing world inculcates various marketing techniques like running PPC ad campaigns and search engine optimization strategies to get in touch with the target audience. With SEO campaigns, you do not have to pay money to the search engines but for PPC campaigns, you ned to pay a certain amount to the search engines for every click made on your ad. To avoid irrelevant clicks on your Google Ads, you need to consider negative keywords to your list when conducting keyword research. It would help your ads to appear to the relevant audience for the keywords or search terms entered and save your ad budget from draining. Let us see in the blog how implementing the negative keywords in sync with the PPC trends helps you improve click-through rate, lead generation, conversion rate, and much more.

Conducting Google keyword research is essential to get an idea of relevant keywords so that your products or services match the users’ intent and are in sync with the marketing trends. With the Google keyword planner tool, you identify the targeted keywords as per your offerings. You may consider choosing the relevant keywords with demographic targeting in your PPC strategy so that the PPC ads are shown to the relevant audience with a high chance of taking the intended action. If the PPC strategy is not implemented adequately, you may see your Google Ads budget getting drained in quick time. You can perform a PPC audit to determine which keywords drive traffic to your landing page and then add Google Ads negative keywords to Google Ads Editor before making the PPC ad go live. To have a better ad rank and position of your Google Ads, you need to write engaging ad copies ad headlines that grab the users’ attention to click on the PPC ad.

Whether you are getting started with PPC ads or already running ad campaigns, you must have Google Ads negative keywords in your PPC strategy to avoid irrelevant clicks. These are keywords that prevent your ad from being displayed for search queries. It communicates with search engines telling them to eliminate specific search queries to avoid confusion and misinterpretation. The negative keywords can be added to your Google Ads account after implementing bulk changes in the Google Ads shared library. Let us discuss ahead in the blog how Google Ads negative keywords can benefit your PPC strategy.

What are negative keywords

Negative keywords are search terms or keywords that prevent the PPC ads from displaying on SERPs (search engine result pages) for the search terms entered by the user. The Google Ads negative keywords prevent your PPC ads from being displayed to irrelevant users and help in driving quality traffic to the landing page, thus improving the Google Ads return on investment.

In PPC ads, as the user has to pay for every click, there is no point in wasting money on irrelevant keywords. There are myths regarding PPC advertising that a huge budget is required to achieve the desired advertising goals. However, this is not always correct. With a well-crafted PPC strategy that includes working on bid adjustment and bidding strategies, you can achieve the desired results. Suppose you offer running shoes and running ad campaigns to increase clicks. You would not wish your ad to appear for searches like trekking shoes, hiking shoes, etc.

Need of negative keywords

Negative keywords play a vital role in the PPC ads, as it helps to get in touch with the relevant audience and save your ad budget from getting wasted. With the help of Google keyword research, you can select the negative keywords with a quality search volume. Thus, the users that are displayed with the PPC ads are not just doing window shopping but are genuinely interested in taking the intended action. When running display ads on Google Display Network, you can perform a PPC audit and display ads to the relevant audience based on buyer persona. Having clear insights into the users’ activity helps you select the negative keywords accordingly. The professionals have adequate knowledge of running ad campaigns and you can avail of the PPC services to achieve the desired results.

When you are running PPC ad campaigns, you may have your advertising goals like building brand awareness, lead generation, form fill up, etc. When doing Google keyword research, you need to choose high-traffic relevant keywords to display your ads to the relevant audience. In the same way, you need to prepare a negative keyword list so that your PPC ads appear to only the users you wish your ads to appear. With the help of Google Ads negative keywords, you get your ads to be displayed to the relevant audience. Since the digital marketing world keeps evolving with the marketing trends, whether it is PPC trends, SEO trends, e-commerce trends, etc., you need to keep updating the ad copy to grab the users’ attention. So, you can avail of white label PPC services as the experts formulate plans & strategies after performing competition analysis.

​​Every person wants to get a proper return on their investment. Suppose you invest in “mutual funds”, and perform a search query, then a variety of results is displayed like:

• Money market or liquid funds
• Fixed income or debt mutual funds
• Balanced funds
• Monthly Income Plans (MIP)
• Gilt funds
• Equity or growth schemes

So, when the business has added negative keywords like debt & liquid, you won’t see these results when you search for mutual funds. It is quite noticeable that not every ad that appears on SERPs is relevant for the users, so simply the other way around; we can say that it is possible that our ads could be irrelevant to many users and thus displaying it in front of such users may not yield the desired result. Hence, Google ad negative keywords prevent your ad from displaying in front of users searching for something different.

Types of negative keywords

“Excess of anything is bad” is why you need to be careful while using negative keywords. You cannot overuse them as it might reduce the reach of ads to relevant customers. Below are the different types of negative keywords to understand how and when to use them.

1. Negative broad match – This type of Google Ads negative keyword will block your PPC ad if the search query has any one term of the negative keyword. E.g., if you have added ‘free PPC’ as the negative keyword, then, if the search query has anyone term, whether free or PPC, then your ad would be blocked. If the search query is ‘PPC services’, your ad would be blocked as it has PPC.
2. Negative phrase match – This type of Google Ad negative keyword will block your PPC ad if the search query has the negative terms in the search terms entered along with other terms. E.g., if you have ‘ free PPC’ as the negative keyword and the search term entered is ‘free PPC services near me’, then the ad would be blocked as it has the term negative keyword ‘free PPC’.
3. Negative exact match – This type of Google Ad negative keyword will block your PPC ad if the search query has the exact negative terms searched as you have entered. E.g., if you have ‘free PPC’ added as the negative keyword and the search term is exactly ‘free PPC’, the ad would be blocked.

Benefits of Negative keywords

• Improves Click-through rate – With the help of Google Ads negative keywords, you get to avoid the irrelevant clicks on your PPC ad. Avoiding these clicks helps you to improve the click-through rate. The better the click-through rate, the higher the users’ chances of taking the landing page’s intended action.

When your PPC ads appear for the relevant search queries related to the products or services that you offer, the impression share that you receive is the relevant audience interested in your ad. With the negative keywords added to your Google Ads account, you get to have the users on your landing page with high chances of taking the intended action. So, you need to have an eye-catching post-click landing page that grabs the users’ attention to take the intended action. To ease the user navigation on the landing page, you need to perform audience segmentation so that the user gets to reach the section that they are looking for. You need to touch the unique selling point of the users that creates an urgency among the users to convert into customers.

• Boosts conversion rate – Another advantage of using the Google Ads negative keywords is that it boosts the conversion rate. When you add negative keywords in your Google Ads account for the ad campaigns, the relevant ad is blocked. But when the ads appear, the users that see your ads are interested in making a click. So, when you see these visitors reach the landing page, they have a high chance of taking the intended action. You need to have an eye-catching call to action to make these users click on your ad. To boost the conversion rate on your PPC ads, you can avail of white label PPC services that increase the impression share, ultimately leading to increasing the conversion rate. Some points to consider in improving the conversion rate are listed below.

1. 1. Use strong CTA.
   2. Add live chat.
   3. Conduct a/b testing.
   4. Improve page loading speed.
   5. Optimize your ads for mobile devices.

• Create more relevant ad groups – When you add negative keywords in your ads, you get the advantage of creating more relevant ad groups. As in a Google Ads account, you have the option of creating different ad groups and ad campaigns; it helps to target the users based on user intent. You can target the users based on demographic targeting so that the users engage with your ads multiple times when the ads appear for the relevant search queries. The multiple times that the users see your ad it helps in building brand awareness. When you divide your ads into relevant ad groups, the relevant audience sees your ads and it avoids any ad fatigue when a huge number of ad campaigns are running at a time like shopping ads, expanded text ads, responsive ads, display ads, etc. Some points to consider when creating ad groups are listed below.

1. 1. Perform audience segmentation.
   2. Focus on keyword targeting.
   3. Have a defined ad budget.

• Save money on irrelevant clicks – Another crucial point that negative keywords help to deal with is saving money on irrelevant clicks. As in PPC advertising, you have to pay money to search engines every time a click is made on the ad. So, if your Google Ads keep appearing every time for the search query related to your business, you would have irrelevant clicks where users would not take the intended action. There are multiple users that are just doing window shopping and have a very low chance of taking any action. So, adding negative keywords in ad groups in the Google Ads account helps you save your advertising budget. Some points to focus on to avoid irrelevant clicks are listed below.

1. 1. Focus on the buyer journey.
   2. Strategize keyword bidding.
   3. Focus on choosing the relevant ad format.

• Drive quality traffic on landing page – When you add negative keywords to your Google Ads account, you see quality traffic on your landing page. The negative keywords list in your ad campaigns helps your PPC ads appear in the relevant search query. When you see the relevant search query appear on the Google search result, not all the users are relevant to the product or services that you offer. So you need to focus on choosing the target audience to get in touch with your Google Ads. As you focus on preparing an attribution report in Google Analytics to determine where your users are coming from, in the same way, you can consider preparing a PPC report to choose users that have high chances of taking the intended action. You can also consider running display campaigns on the Google Display Network to drive quality traffic to your landing page. Some of the points that you can focus on to drive quality traffic are mentioned below.

1. 1. Use great content in ad description.
   2. Engage eye-catching call to action.
   3. Write appropriately, making use of the ad space.
   4. The ad headlines should be written appropriately.

How to add negative keywords

In the Google Ads account, for a PPC specialist, it is quite an important task to use the negative keywords smartly so that the visitors can get the full benefit and achieve their business goals within their budget. The digital marketing agency can create a strategy where the PPC specialist can easily add negative keywords to trigger the PPC ad to irrelevant users. Till now, you must have got an idea of what negative keywords are and their kinds. You can either add individual negative keywords to your ad campaign or you can add multiple keywords at the same time. You can follow the steps mentioned below on how to add negative keywords to the ad campaign.

First of all, log in to your account in Google Ads and go to your campaign or ad groups. Then follow the steps as stated.

Individual Negative Keywords

1. Choose Keywords and Targeting.

2. Go to Keywords, Negative.

3. Click Add negative keyword.

4. Select either ad group negative keyword or campaign negative keyword as per your choice.

5. Choose the new keyword’s destination and click ok.

Multiple Negative Keywords

To add multiple negative keywords in your ad campaign, you can choose to add either negative keywords or campaign negative keywords.

1. Choose keywords and targeting (as in individual negative keywords).
2. Go to keywords, negative (as in individual negative keywords).
3. Click on make multiple changes.

4. Either select my data includes columns for campaigns and/or ad groups or use selected destinations.

In case if you select the former one, select add as campaign-level negative keywords or add as ad group-level negative keywords.

5. After that you can paste or type the negative keyword and then click on process.
6. The “Make multiple changes tool” will display the total number of changes that are made. Then click on Finish and review changes.
7. Have a look at pending changes. If you want to add the pending changes to your account, click on keep and to undo your changes, click on reject.

ROUND OFF

Now you must have an idea of what negative keywords are and how crucial it is to add them to your PPC strategy to avoid irrelevant clicks. After conducting Google keyword research, you must consider building a negative keyword list. The negative keywords need to be in sync with the marketing trends so that you do not miss out on the target audience using online marketing platforms during a specific duration like holidays, season end, etc. So you must consider running holiday ads at Christmas, Thanksgiving, etc. You need to analyze the performance of PPC metrics, do a competitor campaign analysis and then make changes in your PPC strategy accordingly. You can also get in touch with a digital marketing company that provides PPC services, social media marketing, web development, email marketing, content marketing, e-commerce PPC., etc. and skyrocket online sales.

References

• The plain english guide to negative keywords
• The definitive guide to Negative keywords in Google Ads