A tip that may save you money
We have all been paying attention to keywords by now. We focus on such matters on an everyday basis, between writing articles, press releases, tweets and rapid conversion landing pages.
Keywords are gravely important to the success of online publishers and content marketers who use both organic and paid methods of Internet marketing. Without knowledge of primary and secondary keywords, it would be impossible to create content for an audience appropriately.
However, for those online marketers engaging in paid Internet marketing processes and using Google AdWords to do so, they should realize that not every possible keyword is going to benefit them.
This is where negative keywords come into consideration.
What is a negative keyword?
A negative keyword is a word that you define in a campaign or ad group within Google AdWords. The word you define as a negative keyword is a term that will not trigger an advertisement of yours.
Negative keywords are added to campaigns so that broad terms, or terms that share the same language, do not trigger advertisements. Words defined as negative keywords may bear some similarities to your keywords, but will ultimately help you target your text ads in a more direct, niche manner.
To offer an explanation in clearer terms, please see the example below.
[text_ad]
Example of a negative keyword
Let’s pretend you are passionate about audio equipment. You have a popular blog that is full of niche keywords that relate to the world of audio.
In addition to your free email newsletter, free white papers and audio podcasts, you have an online retail store that sells high-end audio products, including headphones and digital music players.
You decide to run text ads because you are having a big sale on your entire stock of headphones. However, when you start looking through your keywords, you realize that the market includes an array of earbud headphones that you do not stock.
Due to this realization, you go into your campaign section of Google AdWords and define the term ‘earbud headphones’ as a negative keyword.
This way, search inquiries for the term ‘earbud headphones’ will not trigger your text ad to display. However, other searches that involve the term ‘headphones’ will still spur your online text ad to appear.
Additional information on negative keywords
As Google states on one of its webpages, “by filtering out unwanted impressions, negative keywords can help you reach the most appropriate prospects, reduce your cost-per-click (CPC), and increase your ROI.”
Therefore, any online publisher or content marketer that produces text ads through Google AdWords should be focusing on negative keywords in order to save money and build a better, more defined audience.
For those who want to start adding negative keywords today, it’s quite simple. The process is much like adding any keyword to an ad group or campaign. All you have to do is add the keyword, and enter a negative sign (-) before the term.
The topic of negative keywords is a great precursor to our Writing Killer Text Ads webinar, which is taking place today at 12:30 pm EST. It is not too late to signup if you want to learn proven strategies for writing texts ads that trigger response, increase page views and generate revenue.
