Mom never taught us this and our teachers certainly didn’t, but sometimes it’s good to have a negative attitude, at least in paid search. With apologies to the memory of the great singer Bing Crosby I’ll try to explain a little something about search marketing: Sometimes you’ve got to accentuate the negative, eliminate the derivative, latch on to the narrative and don’t mess with meanings in between. You’ve got to use that negative key word function for what it’s worth in order to streamline your search marketing efforts.
Clients come to ConductSearch.com with keywords, lots of keywords, but without a single negative keyword. They’re often a little surprised, but once explained, it’s easy to follow.
First, the basics: a negative keyword simply has a “-“ preceding the keyword (ex. “-cowboy”). Search engines read this negative keyword from your Google or Yahoo paid advert and automatically grant a “no go” for ad placement based on that unwanted keyword. This avoids unwanted clicks and undesired associations. For instance, if you sell gummy bears, you may have every candy or packaging keyword in the world handy, but you’re going to want to include “-decay”, “-grizzly”, “-polar”, “-dental”, “-tooth”, etc. Because language is interchangeable, the search process shouldn’t be expected to differentiate between the usages of words we include for search. Without using negative keywords, your return-on-investment (ROI) is compromised.
There are inherent associations with certain words that would be deemed negative with your advertising. “Sex” isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but if you are a children’s toy maker it would be best to avoid any mentioning of the word with your company products. Further, “sex” is a very common search word. If it were used in tandem with keywords to bring your company up, multitudes of clicks would likely ensue - clicks that would cost you money. Not only does paid search generate unwanted clicks, but with exposure to heavily searched words there’s the chance of exorbitant exposure to unwanted clicks.
Prevent some of the more unnecessary and annoying clicks. For example, if you sold women’s apparel, if you added a keyword such as “-baby” and another “-babies” none of your adverts would display if the user typed in the word baby or babies as part of their search phrase. This could be useful if you don't sell baby clothes. Equally, you could use “lycra” and “tshirt” as negative keywords. Just add them to your keyword list. So, by using “-baby”, “-rubber”, and any number of search descriptors a clothier delineates his or her search results.
The words to be negated irrespective of your business are legion. First consider general words that are often used for search that would not be relevant to your product. Like: Accusation, Bomb, Chapter 11, dead, dirty, free, lawsuit, loss, terrorist. You get the picture. These search words are used frequently and likely will show your ad to someone likely not interested in it. Further, their curiosity might be piqued at your seemingly out of place ad – and clicks ensue, after all it costs the search user nothing. These clicks will add up while this could become an embarrassing association. All of these potential problems are preventable.
Some of those negated words are safeguarding, too. Search is dynamic and ever-changing in form. Heaven forbid a high profile suicide whose search generates waves of search words similar to your campaign, either a name or a location. Without some negative keyword protection there could be a flood of unwanted and irrelevant searches on the interactive scene costing you money.
We have a standard negative keyword list that campaigns review to see if there are any to be removed, then we develop keywords based on name and industry. Then develop a third list based on search engine results to see what similar keyword results generate more unwanted results.
Negative keywords prevent your paid search placement from appearing in unwanted query results, improving efficiency and possibly embarrassing placement. Whether or not you manage your own search engine marketing efforts, marketers should monitor negative keywords and update as needed. Because smart search marketers run campaigns through multiple search engines, it’s imperative to devise lists particular to the engine. Some engines have negative keyword maximum usages so, budgeting of sorts, may be necessary.
Negative keyword budgeting. That’s adding up a list of words to be used in order to have your ads not shown to the wrong people. You gotta love search.
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