Negative Keywords Are Very Important! Optimization for them Should be Scheduled and Frequent! Search Terms Report should be primary way of finding negative keywords. Remember, we want to filter out two kinds of negative keywords:
- 1. Keywords that have 0 conversion value
- 2. Keywords that are not profitable
To benchmark keywords that are not profitable:
- Is there enough data to judge the keyword yet? – Minimum 30 clicks, ideally more than 100 in order to judge
- Does this keyword bring in a healthy Cost/Conversion or ROAS? Can we help it through lowering bids, rewriting the ad, improve quality score -> brings down CPC -> cost per conversion comes down.
To Add Negative Keywords from Search Terms
- Look for keywords that have no value/conversion potential for your ad group / campaign
- 1. Add the keyword as a negative broad match
- 2. Add the exact match keyword so it shows up and you can track it on the search terms report
You have to have data to make decisions about negative keywords! Typically only add search terms with more than 30 clicks to negative keywords… anything less than that and you could be cutting out potential.
This is why, for smaller budgets ( $10 – $50) , only add 5-10 keywords per ad group -? if you have too much, data will be thin and take a long ass time to get to a robust search terms report
$10/day -> 1/2 keywords // $50/day -> 5-10 keywords
Google tries to give each keyword equal exposure, takes too long to get data.
When to Add Negative Keywords:
- <30(100) Clicks per Search Term – You want to have enough data to make a confident decision with regards to a search term before deeming it as negative.
- NOTE – Keep in mind though, just because a keyword has 100 clicks and only a few conversions, doesn’t mean we have to add it to negative rigth away. We could just have to alter the bids to get them profitable. increase CTR, lower bid, rewrite ads. Taking keywords with conversion out should be a last resort, try other stuff before considering adding it as negative
- Keywords that have 0 Conversion Value – i.e. Dinosaur Chairs
How Granular do we want keyword targeting/search terms to be? – We should be looking at each keyword term from a lens of profit!
Searching For Negative Keywords in the Search Terms Report:
- Filter out the Good, Profitable keywords – we can do this by cost per conversion,
Negative Keyword Lists
Negative Keyword Lists: Lists of negative keywords that you set up in your account that you can add across multiple campaigns. This is so you don’t have to add the same negative keywords over and over again in multiple campaigns. You can organize these in a few ways:
- Account irrelevant negative keywords – has nothing to do with your business, but you know you don’t want to bid on it i.e. free, amazon, download, e book, etc
- Campaign Specific negative keyword lists – this is when you have lists that would apply to a campaign/category of campaigns. i.e. you sell dinosaur desks but not dinosaur chairs, and you have a few campaign chairs, so you’d create a list of negative keywords for chair campaigns, and you would include dinosaurs as a keyword within that
!! Isaac doesn’t add negative keywords at campaign level, says its too messy. He adds them as:
- Ad Group Level
- Campaign level via lists – Account irrelevant lists and Campaign lists
ex 50 campaigns, each 5-10 ad groups, using campaign level keyword lists, account irrelelvant keyword lists and then ad group negative keywords for sculpting. Avoid individual campaign level negative keywords because you can typically use lists for these and it makes it much cleaner for you especially when you scale.
Traffic Sculpting at the Ad Group Level
You can add negative keywords to the add group level to sculpt the traffic. There are two reasons why you would do this:
- To make sure the right search term is given to the right ad group/landing page
- To ensure that the right bid (ad group level) is given to the right search term
- or both together!
