Category: Google Ads
Most people setting up Google Ads spend their time thinking about which searches they want to appear for. Far fewer spend any time thinking about the searches they don’t want. Yet for a small local business, the second list can save as much money as the first one makes.
That’s what negative keywords are for. They’re words or phrases you tell Google never to show your adverts for. Add “jobs” as a negative keyword, for example, and your advert won’t appear when someone searches for “electrician jobs Salisbury”, however closely the rest of the search matches what you do.
It’s one of the simplest settings in Google Ads, and one of the most often neglected.
Why you end up paying for the wrong searches
Google Ads doesn’t only show your advert for the exact words you choose. Depending on how your keywords are set up, Google will also show it for searches it thinks are related, and its idea of “related” is often broader than yours.
Say you’re a plumber with the keyword “plumber Salisbury”. Without any negative keywords, you could find yourself paying for clicks from people searching for plumbing apprenticeships, plumbing courses, how to become a plumber, plumbing supplies, or plumbers in a town you don’t cover. None of those people are going to book a job with you, but each click costs the same as one from a genuine customer.
On a large account with a big budget, a bit of waste like that might not matter much. On a small local account, it can easily eat a good chunk of the budget every month.
How to find the searches you don’t want
The best tool you have is the search terms report. You’ll find it in your Google Ads account, and it lists the actual words people typed before your advert appeared and before they clicked.
The first time you look at it, it can be quite an eye-opener. Go through it line by line and ask a simple question about each search: would this person ever become a customer? If the answer is no, it’s a candidate for a negative keyword.
It’s also worth thinking ahead. Some words are almost never useful for a local service business, and you can add them before they cost you anything. Words like jobs, careers, salary, course, training, free, DIY and “how to” are common examples. So are the names of places you don’t serve, and products or services you don’t offer.
Be a little careful, though. A word that’s useless for one business can be valuable for another. A roofer might happily add “DIY” as a negative, but a builders’ merchant probably wouldn’t. And “cheap” might be a waste of money for a high-end kitchen fitter but exactly right for a budget removals firm. Think about your own customers rather than copying someone else’s list.
Different ways to add them
Like normal keywords, negative keywords come with match types, and they work slightly differently.
A broad match negative blocks any search that contains all of the negative words, in any order. A phrase match negative, in quotation marks, blocks searches that contain those words in that exact order. An exact match negative, in square brackets, blocks only that precise search.
One thing that catches people out is that negative keywords don’t automatically cover close variations the way normal keywords do. If you add “course” as a negative, you may also need to add “courses”. It’s a small thing, but it’s worth checking.
You can add negative keywords to a single ad group, to a whole campaign, or to a shared list that you apply across several campaigns. For most small businesses, a shared list of the obvious ones (jobs, training, free and so on) applied to every campaign, plus a few specific ones added to individual campaigns, works well.
Performance Max campaigns, which used to give advertisers very little control over the searches they appeared for, now let you add negative keywords too. If you run one, it’s worth making sure your negatives are applied there as well.
Don’t overdo it
It’s possible to go too far. Add too many negative keywords, or ones that are too broad, and you can block genuine customers without realising.
A common example is adding a place name as a negative because you don’t serve it, only to find it also appears in a search you do want. Adding “Southampton” as a negative stops your advert showing for “plumber Southampton”, which might be right, but it would also block someone searching for a plumber on Southampton Road in Salisbury. Keep an eye on whether the number of impressions and clicks drops more than you’d expect after adding a batch of negatives.
Make it a habit
Negative keywords aren’t a job you do once. People search in new ways all the time, and Google’s idea of what’s related to your keywords changes too. Checking the search terms report regularly, every week when a campaign is new and at least every month after that, is one of the best uses of a few minutes you’ll find.
As we said in our post on getting the most out of your PPC, being seen on Google simply isn’t enough. You have to be seen on the right searches. Negative keywords are how you make sure you aren’t paying to be seen on the wrong ones.
If you’d like someone to go through your search terms and tidy things up, the friendly, experienced team at Spire Digital manage pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns for businesses in Salisbury and the surrounding area. Give us a call on 01722 320 500.