GOOGLE   ADWORDS   101   ARTICLE

Mastering Google AdWords Marketing: Negative Keywords

If you are managing a Google AdWords marketing campaign, it is critical to employ negative keywords. This is particularly true if any of the keyword phrases in the ad campaign are broad- or phrase-matched. Negative keywords cause an ad to not be shown if any of the keywords are in the search phrase. This is important for a few reasons. First, because the ad will not be shown for keyword phrases that are not relevant, there will be fewer click-throughs that do not convert to sales. Second, the overall CTR (click-through rate) will be higher because there will be fewer instances of searchers viewing the ad but not clicking. The higher CTR will cause the ad to attain a higher position without requiring a higher CPC (cost per click). This will save you money and increase the ROI of your Google AdWords marketing campaign.

Let's look at an example. Suppose an online store sells organic food. The store's Google AdWords campaign has an ad group with these broad-matched keywords:

organic food
organic food store

Using at least one keyword research tool (and preferably more) will reveal many keyword phrases that are searched on that contain the phrase "organic food" but are clearly not related to purchasing organic food for people to eat (as opposed to pets). For example, using the Overture (Yahoo) search term suggestion tool yields these results for the keyword phrase "organic food":

24904 organic food
1286 organic dog food
1243 organic food store
1020 organic baby food
689 organic pet food
685 organic food online
465 organic cat food
373 benefit of organic food

It would likely not benefit the online store that's selling organic food for people to eat to display an ad next to search results for the keyword phrase "organic dog food". Adding "-dog" to the AdWords ad group will prevent the ad from appearing for that particular search phrase. Keep in mind that the Overture search term suggestion tool usually does not differentiate between singular and plural forms of keywords. From this list, here's how to set up negative keywords for the Google ad campaign:

-dog
-dogs
-baby
-babies
-pet
-pets
-cat
-cats
-benefit
-benefits

Only place one negative keyword per line. Precede each keyword with a dash. The preceding "-" indicates to the Google AdWords system that the keyword to follow is a negative keyword. If any of the negative keywords are in a search phrase, the ad will not appear next to the search results.

If the online store sells organic baby food, it is still worth including "-baby" and "-babies" for this general "organic food" ad group example. A separate ad group could be created for items as specific as organic baby food. Each ad group should have a very tight focus. Do include both the singular and plural forms of negative keywords as people often search using both. For example, "buy organic baby food" or "buy organic food for babies" are both searches that would cause an ad to be shown for a Google AdWords ad group containing "organic food" as a broad-matched keyword phrase.

The list of negative keywords for an ad group should evolve. Start with a list derived from a handful of keyword tools but add to the list over time. The web logs for your web server are an ideal source for discovering new negative keywords. Whether you sift through the raw web logs or have a web statistics program to access the log data, be sure to examine the searches yielding hits from your ad group. For example, if you see a search in the logs for "organic food gives me gas" then add "-gas" as a negative keyword. Often, there are hundreds of unique searches that people perform that do not show up in any keyword research tool. Gradually build up your list of negative keywords to avoid receiving traffic that will not convert to sales.

Use our free keyword research tool to help determine the negative keywords for your Google AdWords marketing campaigns.

CONTEXTUAL   ADVERTISING   ARTICLE

Separate your Google AdWords search advertising and contextual advertising. Why?

1. The target audiences could be different
2. Content ads don't perform as well (in most cases)
3. Track separately to see which type works for your situation
4. Add clarity to search stats
5. Google has a "negative site feature" for contextual ad campaigns

How? When creating an AdWords ad campaign, you will be given this choice:

Show ads on Google and the search network content network

Create two separate campaigns, one with only the search network box checked and one with only the content network box checked. The target audience for search ads and content ads (contextual ads) can be quite different. Let's call them searchers (active) and browsers (passive), respectively. Searchers are actively typing the keywords you are bidding on. Browsers, who see your ad triggered by a contextual advertising system, are more passive in the sense that they didn't type specific keywords into a search box.

Create separate ad campaigns with these distinct types of visitors in mind. For example, suppose you're selling organic coffee beans online and you have the following keywords in both a search advertising campaign and a contextual advertising campaign (note that a real Google AdWords campaign would include broad, phrase and exact matches as opposed to simply broad matches):

organic coffee
organic coffee beans
coffee beans online
fair trade coffee
organic fair trade coffee

Let's argue that a high percentage of people actively typing "fair trade coffee" into a search box (searchers) are interested in buying fair trade coffee. (Enticing them to actually buy from your site is a topic for another article.) Suppose a Google AdSense publisher has written an article covering the certification process for fair trade coffee. People reading this article (browsers) are likely not predisposed to want to purchase fair trade coffee. They could be more interested in the economics or politics of fair trade. Track your Google content ads and, if you receive too many clicks without sales, either modify the text of your content ads, reduce the bids or focus the keyword list. For example, if the keyword list above was originally incorporated into both a search ad campaign and a contextual ad campaign, the keyword list for the content ad could be altered to something more along these lines:

buy fair trade coffee
order fair trade coffee
purchase fair trade coffee
fair trade coffee online

This way, the search and content ads can diverge. The ad copy and/or keyword list and/or bids could evolve in different directions over time. If they are lumped together in the same AdWords campaign, a change in reaction to poor performance because of a single AdSense content page could severely limit a robust search ad campaign. Conversely, in some cases, a content ad might perform better than a search ad. Again, it's useful to monitor the campaigns separately and to evolve them discretely.

Note that when creating a Google AdWords advertising campaign, displaying ads on Google itself is not an option but a given. Therefore, when you create two campaigns, they will, effectively, be competing against each other on Google's own site(s). Consider always setting the bids lower, then, for one of the campaigns. Since contextual ads are usually not as effective as search ads, set the bids lower for the campaign with the content network box checked. Also, if you have created the ad copy with a contextual advertising audience in mind (for browsers), that ad might not be appropriate as a search ad on Google (for searchers) itself. Additionally, if you have created separate tracking urls for the two campaigns (highly recommended for whatever web analytics you use), it will be confusing to see ads with content tracking show up for Google searches.

Separating content ads and search ads into separate Google AdWords campaigns has the added benefit of clarifying the statistics Google provides. Consider this example when looking at the stats for two ad groups (AG #1 and AG #2) at the campaign level (combining separate campaign reports into one for comparison):

Ad Group Clicks Impr. CTR Avg. CPC Cost Avg. Pos AG #1 1,550 103,785 1.4% $0.06 $92.89 7.8 AG #2 84 12,033 0.6% $0.16 $13.19 5.0

Keep in mind that Google determines the position of the ads based on a combination of the CPC (cost per click) bid and the CTR (click through rate). Examining the CTR is crucial to assessing how well an ad group is performing. Looking at these two ad groups it appears as though AG #2 is performing poorly when compared to AG #1. Since Google does not factor in the CTR of content ads when calculating the ranking of an ad for placement in search, this is misleading. Looking at the Google statistics at the ad group level reveals the confusion caused by mixing search ads and content ads in the same campaign:

AG #1 Clicks Impr. CTR Avg. CPC Cost Avg. Pos Search Total 1,550 103,785 1.4% $0.06 $92.89 7.8 Content Total 0 0 - - - -

AG #2 Clicks Impr. CTR Avg. CPC Cost Avg. Pos Search Total 81   5,993 1.3% $0.16 $12.68 5.9 Content Total 3   6,040 0.0% $0.17 $0.51 4.1

The CTR used by Google to calculate the search ad ranking for AG #2 is, in fact, 1.3% and not the 0.6% value seen when reviewing the campaign level report. Combining the two types of ads means the CTR shown at that level is useless. Note that these are not fictitious reports. These are actual reports where only the ad group names have been altered. In this case, the content ads are performing rather poorly and this skews the combined CTR that Google reports at the campaign level.

Also, suppose you're aiming to keep your ads in the top 5 spots for search results. Scanning the campaign report for the campaign that includes AG #2, you'd see the average position of 5.0 and leave the ad group intact. This, again, is misleading. Digging into the ad group report shows the search position is 5.9, not in the top 5. Clearly, separating content ads from search ads aids with interpreting the stats provided.

Plus, if you increased the bids to regain a top 5 listing, you'd be increasing your bids for content placement, as well. You might be content (no pun intended) with the 4.1 position for the content ad, so now you're paying more money when you don't need to. You have less control when combining ad types. Separating them into disparate campaigns provides control over bids, ad copy, keyword lists, makes the stats more clear and will, ultimately, save money.

There's one other factor to consider: Google has introduced a "negative site feature" which only applies to campaigns opted into their content network. Because so many content ads do perform poorly, it's crucial to weed out content sites that do not work for your ads. Track Google content ad hits to your site and add those that don't perform well to the "Campaign Negative Sites" list for your content campaign.

When creating new Google AdWords advertising campaigns, take the time to create separate ad campaigns for content ads and search ads. For existing, combined ad campaigns, it's worth taking the time to replicate a campaign and set one for the content network and the other for the search network. You'll save time and money in the long run!