Aggressive Negative Keywords

[AussieWebmaster]

The key to really tight spends and high CTR is aggressive use of negative keywords.

Most people forget to negative out the long tail terms they create to improve the accuracy of their campaigns.

For example I am broad matched for widget but also have individual groups for blue widgets, spinning blue widgets, jumping blue widgets, red widgets etc.

now if I do not negative out the long tail terms Google looks to see what keyword they want to use for a search for jumping blue widgets.... we would think the more specific would get the search... not always the case.

Google looks at what will make them the most money... so the widget keyword which has a much higher max bid will be shown (hey it meets the criteria) as Google makes more... this will slowly change when the CTR drops for that term using the broad widget ad as people are looking for more specific widgets...

To make sure your long tail terms get a fighting chance you have to be very aggressive with the negatives.... a three word term should appear in the groups for the two and one term keywords as a negative.

[adamap]

Amen. I religiously check Google's Search Query Reports and typed keyword reports from analytics packages. When you couple the negative keywords with the long tail keywords you can really get some strong CTR.

[mtauber]

If you add or only use keywords that are targeted Long tail and set to Phrase match you wouldnt need to to many negatives

[AussieWebmaster]

true but you lose other potential keywords.... this helps lower what you pay for the long tail terms - not buying them at the higher costing root term

[mtauber]

true but you lose other potential keywords.... this helps lower what you pay for the long tail terms - not buying them at the higher costing root term

If the keyword research was done right you should be ok. What do you mean by root term?

[AussieWebmaster]

Keyword research can only take you so far.... the way people use a group of keywords in a search query can be very broad

[kjripp]

What I do is scour the search query reports for not only negatives, but lower costing long tail keywords that are serving a less targeted ad (from a broader phrase-match term) and which I can add to different ad groups so they serve the more relevant ad.

One BIG problem I've recently noticed is that my broader ad is being served for keywords I already have in other ad groups. I'm going to post separately about that.

~Kari

[Discovery]

I would love to see Google create a feature where one could model their campaigns and run it against some type of analysis engine to see what Google's output would be.

In other words a way to crosscheck your campaign structure's effectiveness, including the impact of negative keywords. The crosscheck could be based on a variable of your choice.. bid, specific keyword, even demographic for example, Projected ROI, Margin.

Discovery

[AussieWebmaster]

I would love to see Google create a feature where one could model their campaigns and run it against some type of analysis engine to see what Google's output would be.

In other words a way to crosscheck your campaign structure's effectiveness, including the impact of negative keywords. The crosscheck could be based on a variable of your choice.. bid, specific keyword, even demographic for example, Projected ROI, Margin.

Discovery

This would be great.... well thought out