When setting up a Google Ads campaign, we are clear that one of the necessary bases for its performance to be as desired is to have a well-worked keyword strategy.
However, a good part of advertisers usually spend month after month with a hole that takes a good part of their budget, by skipping a crucial step:
The negativization of keywords.
Does it happen to you too? Or have you heard of negative keywords?
1. What are negative keywords and why are they important?
Basically, keyword negativization is a way to prevent your ads from being shown through search terms made up of keywords that are totally irrelevant or harmful to your business. For this, the Ads system allows us to select those negative keywords that we do not want Google to associate with our ads.
An example! Let's imagine that we sell services of «Luxury bungalows on the coast»:
You are probably not interested in appearing in related searches <>, << mountain >>, <>, since it is not what the user will find when they access the destination of your ad, right? In this case, we can select the keywords that contain the previous terms (<< bungalows in the mountain >>, << cheap accommodation on the coast >>, etc) for their negativization within our keyword strategy.
And this will give certain points in relation to the user experience.
Continuing with the previous example: if we do not negative the keywords that contain the term <> in our ad, it could appear in the search for a group of young people who need accommodation for a few days for a music festival on the coast. And to be honest, it is very likely that a luxury bungalow is not exactly what they are looking for.
The result? A low CTR percentage.
This is not counting that those users click on your ad by mistake or curiosity and appear on your Landing page. There we not only find a high bounce rate and a useless expense in your budget, but it will also influence a poor Quality Score rating in Google Ads. You know: if the Landing Page does not respond correctly to the user's query, the platform will interpret that it is not relevant for that search.
And the worse the Quality Score, the higher the CPC. It all adds up!
In the same way, the negativization of keywords will help increase the conversion ratio by avoiding terms that do not have a purchase intention that corresponds to our interests.
2. How to make keywords negative in your campaigns
2.1. Identify keywords to negative
Before starting to use tools to locate these keywords, it is important to contemplate a prior process of reflection based on a well-defined study of our business model.
To do this, we should be clear about the strengths of our services. But above all, we must be clear about how people can refer to them when reflecting it in search queries and the profile of our or our buyer person (demographics, location, work situation, etc).
From there we can start a first search for keywords to negatively make use of the Google search bar and the conclusions obtained from your business study. You can try different terms that come to mind depending on whether or not they fit the type of audience and scope you want to achieve, such as age range or physical or online sale.
Sign them all up!
That said, let's see what tools we can use to locate our negative keywords more specifically:
- Google keyword planner: Although this tool does not directly indicate a series of keywords to negative, it does allow us to complete a general reference on the terms for which we are most interested in bidding in our campaigns.
- Third-party tools: There are many tools for exploring new keywords or "keywords research", both free and paid, depending on the level of data we want to obtain regarding the effectiveness of those keywords, especially in the positioning of our competence. For this type of research, we find SEMRush, Ubbersuggest or Ahrefs, among the most relevant tools.
- Health Checker: Our tool developed by the Quarizmi team, allows you to create a complete report on the status of your Google Ads campaigns. It includes a list of negative keywords automatically generated from the analysis of your campaign.
- Search terms report: This tool will be useful when we already have a campaign running on which to obtain related data. In this case, the monitoring of results shows us directly what type of keywords have been used by users to activate your ad in the search engine. That is, how many impressions each keyword provides us. The tool also offers a series of statistics on the number of clicks that each one of them has generated, which will give us a more approximate idea of its effectiveness with respect to the main objective of our campaign.
Once all these terms have been located, the ideal would be to classify them in order to have them referenced and easily located according to their type: price, location, purchase / sale, etc.
2.2. Types of matches for negative keywords
For the functionality of our keywords to be as effective as possible, blocking all that traffic that does not interest us, we must be clear about how to structure them using the appropriate type of match.
And it is that in this case, we find a key difference with respect to the operation of positive concordances:
The variations of synonyms, singular and plural, spelling mistakes and other types of variations, must be entered one by one manually. Otherwise these variations could activate our advertisement.
It is very important to keep this in mind!
Having clarified this point, let's see what function each type of negative agreement has with respect to the keyword to be negative:
- Exact match: Represented in the format [keyword].
This type of negativization will filter the activation of our ads so that it does not appear in search terms that contain exactly the keywords that we have denied. This includes the same number of words and even the same order, without adding any extra terms.
- Phrase match: It is represented in the format "keyword".
Somewhat less restrictive than the previous one, since it allows you to block the appearance of your ad against search terms that contain negative keywords. But as long as they are in the established order, and can include terms in front and behind.
- Broad Agreement: It is represented by the keyword format.
Using this type of match, your ad will not show when the negative keyword is included in a search term. The order of the words that form it does not matter as long as they are included.
Now let's take a look at a practical example of the function of each match. In this case, how would the negative keyword "cheap car" behave according to the type of match applied for the activation or not of the ad in relation to:
Idea caught, right?
2.3. Conflict between keywords
When establishing different types of matches for your negative keywords, you must always take into account the reference of the previous work that we have done by having chosen keywords that we are interested in for our campaigns. We will thus prevent the situation of having keywords that are both positive and negative at the same time.
A typical example can be given by making a broad match keyword negative, which in turn blocks the function of other useful keywords in other ads. And this dissonance could translate into conflicts in the performance of each of them.
But look!
To avoid this situation, we can use the Google script "Negative Keyword Conflicts". With it we will be able to find this type of conflict between keywords within our campaign, being able to be programmed for its automatic execution with the frequency that suits us best. We will thus have a periodic data reference that we can review for the constant improvement of our strategy.
Remember: Your campaigns need your time and attention!
2.4. Where to add negative keywords
We can find different levels of application of our negative keywords depending on our needs and the characteristics of our Ads campaigns. A lot of attention here!
At the Account level
As it is a more generic level for the application of negative keywords, its objective is to cover global terms that do not have any type of relationship with the internal and external characteristics of both your brand and your products / services.
At the Campaign level
When they are made up of specific terms for each campaign, the application of negative keywords goes to this level, finding two options depending on whether we need to apply it to a single campaign or to more than one:
- More than one campaign: The advantage of this level of application over the general level is that it allows us to assign our negative keywords to more than one campaign, but excluding those that represent an exception due to their own characteristics.
- Unique campaign: Here we can differentiate between two campaigns that offer a similar product at a general level, but whose specific characteristics make a relevant difference between each of them.
As an example I will put two active campaigns that offer psychology services, but one aimed at family therapy and others aimed at couples therapy. In order to separate one from the other, we would make negative terms such as << individual therapy >> or << couple therapy >> for the first case, and terms related to <>, <> or << therapy with children >> in the second case.
At the Ad Group level
The basic premise at this level of keyword application is to prevent your ads from competing with each other. To this end, we could make negative in each campaign, the keyword that would activate the incorrect similar product. This is known as cross negative keywords.
An example of this would be if our campaign is composed of a group of ads that sell personalized t-shirts, but one of them offers you personalization in short-sleeved shirts, another in long-sleeved shirts and another in suspenders.
3. Conclusion
As we have seen, the analysis process for the negativization of keywords can be the key adjustment that your Ads campaigns needed to continue or even begin to perform as they should.
However, it must be emphasized that this analysis process is as worked and considered as possible. And always reflecting on the negative consequences of certain keywords with respect to the general marketing strategy of the business.
On the other hand, it will be necessary to consider if there may be other factors that may be affecting the performance of the campaigns and their conversion rate. Among them, the adaptability of the ad to different devices (responsive design), the user experience on the landing page, or the copy of the texts used.
And if. Let's not fool ourselves.
Taking into account all the necessary points for the creation of a really effective negative keyword strategy requires a considerable investment of time.
We must think of all the variations of number, gender and different verb forms for each of the concordances that we want to use. A job that gets bigger the bigger your campaign gets.
But it is a necessary job.
Because, why be spending our budget in an absurd way when you have in your hand to turn the situation around?
As I have mentioned before, our Health Checker tool can be a very good option.
Health Checker provides you with a complete report on the status of your Google Ads campaigns through a process of analyzing the data of your campaign, thanks to the AI system developed by our team.
And in this report, in addition to a sample of really useful data to improve your Ads campaigns, it offers you a list of keywords ready to negative based on the characteristics of your ads.
Access here and find out!
So now you know: being clear about the correct keywords for your campaigns is as important as being clear about the wrong ones.
Thank you very much for reading me and see you in the next article!
JOS (without E)
