Negative keywords are a really great way to block unwanted searches in your campaign and keep the click through rate healthy – and, consequently, keep cost per click under control.
Consider the following negative keywords for almost any campaign:
discount
cheap
free
afforable
grant
clearance
close out
jobs
career
employment
resume
salary
price
quote
how to
diy
forum
guide
ideas
Almost no business wants to pay for traffic based on those keywords!
Just be careful not to inadvertantly include a campaign level negative keyword that kills traffic for the keywords you want. A great tool for finding negative keywords is Google’s Keyword Tool – enter your keyword/s and look for results that you do not want in your campaign, then add those keywords to the negative keyword list.
Also, if you’re running AdWords and have “broad” match keywords, you can use the “See Search Terms” function in the keyword tab to find out which search terms that have triggered clicks. If you see any keywords in there that you don’t want, just add them to the negative keyword list (this can be done at the adgroup or campaign level).
For example: You have a broad match keyword “dog trainer”. Using the “See Search Terms” function, you notice that “dog trainer association” is bringing clicks to your campaign, but you want to exclude searches for “association”. You shoud add the keyword “association” to the negative keyword list.
