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When we launch a search campaign on Google Ads we always have a lot of attention in the first hours of the launch, as well as in the following days. Sólo con ver las búsquedas en las que se nos ha hecho clic.
Why is it so important with the list of negative keywords?
The reason we are looking at campaigns is because of the Search Terms. Some of you may wonder what this is about Search Terms. The Search Terms, basically, are the keywords by which you have searched for us and clicked on our ad. So this is something to watch and be very careful, because sometimes we will appear for some search that we really do not want to appear and consequently that we click and have spent money on something that really does not interest us. It does not matter because the search does not match the landing page and if, for example, our goal is to generate conversions as this will not happen
I imagine that with what was explained in the previous paragraph you have understood the importance they have. It is one of the first optimizations that the advertiser learns from PPC campaign management before any other.
If from the beginning of your campaigns you do this review every day, I know it’s a Chinese job, you will be feeding the different lists of negative keywords you will have. You can use these lists to add them to your accounts, campaigns or ad groups. Now you’re wondering why on different levels. The answer for everyone is easy:
- Account level keywords. If you have a fairly basic advertiser account in which there is no difference between campaigns and ad groups you should work at this level.
- Campaign level keywords. If the ad groups within your campaign are fairly homogeneous this should be the level at which you should work.
- Keywords at ad group level When you have a few groups of ads that are very shredded, or that have nothing to do with each other, you should work on the negative keywords from the lowest level.
And… What do I get out of it?
Including these lists will bring you great benefits. The first is that you will be able to control the cost of your campaigns and decrease it, therefore the cost per conversion will decrease. On the other hand the CTR will be higher, because having so much care in the searches you will no longer appear for searches that do not interest you and you will appear in hotter searches.
With all this, I’m sure you’re eager to start creating your own lists. But before that you must know in detail the products / services and their specifications, the company, the objectives and purpose for which they are making Google Ads for it. What I’m trying to say is that you don’t want to make a lot of lists and step on your toes.
Where can I get negative keywords for my lists?
There are different sources from which you can get/create your lists. Although there are also some lists of negative keywords that you should have in all your advertiser accounts. We could say that these lists are the ones that we must put in the first place (before launching them) in a mandatory way.
The different sources from which you can obtain keywords or mandatory lists are the following:
1. Within mandatory lists the first one I always add in the account with lists in relation to countries, provinces, cities and municipalities. The municipalities I always take are those with more than 50,000 inhabitants.
The reason for including these lists is that many people do searches with a high intention of finding out where they can go to see/purchase the product in a physical store and not on the Internet. Therefore these searches that do not have, in their great majority, a purchase intention, are of a negative nature.
2. Closing the list of obligatory words we find the lists of words that have no intention of making a purchase. I group these lists in different sub-lists;
- List of information: what, where, when, how, etc… in the vast majority of searches containing these words are usually to find out about the product and not to make a purchase.
- List product information: photo, description, specifications, benefits, etc… just like the previous ones: they look for information.
- Competitors list: you must include keywords of the name of companies of your competition. I also add the one of some marketplaces as it can be: Amazon, Aliexpress, etc. I’m not saying it works for all accounts, because you might want to bid on the competition, but if you don’t have a big budget I don’t recommend you do it.
- Price list: many people search by price (they just want to be informed) or simply add to their searches: cheap, economic, low cost, etc…
- Second hand list: as with the price list there are also those who add: second hand, Milanuncios, used, Wallapop, etc.
With these “mandatory lists” we close the lists that you should have saved in an Excel sheet or Google Drive Spreadsheet so that when it’s your turn to create an account or optimize one already in use you have these lists at hand. Watch out! Always check the keywords with the company so you don’t step on your fingers.
Leaving aside the list of required items, there are the lists that you must make from different sources. These are the following:
3. When you carry out the keyword research, before creating the campaigns, you will be able to see the different searches that people carry out in relation to the products. From here you can get both the keywords you need in your campaign and the ones you don’t want at all costs, so you “kill two birds with one stone”. Besides, this will be very powerful if you do it by products since you will have everything more broken down.
You can do this study either with Google’s Keyword Planner or I like Semrush very much because you can download csv files and mount them on your spreadsheets for very complete keyword studies.
4. Finally, the last source from which you will get the search terms you want to include as negatives, and in turn will also give you an idea of new terms by which you do want to appear. It’s simply a matter of checking daily, within Google Ads, which searches have appeared and been clicked on by your customers.
If you have a regularity with this analysis, I assure you that you will have your budget better employed as it will not go away in unwanted clicks.
How do I enter negative keyword lists?
This is the easiest step, although you must also have a clear structure from the beginning so that when introducing new negative keywords you have everything well organized.
You must go to the Google Ads interface and in the upper right corner, right next to your user, you will find the wrench that says “Tools and Settings”.
You must create the list with your keywords, don’t forget to give it a name that identifies it. Then what you have to do is to include these lists in the level you have previously decided.
Last advice
When including your negative keywords in the lists my advice is to include a “+” in front of each word. You may ask yourself: Why in broad agreement? Simply because by including this with the + what I get is that any combination with this keyword is directly negated. There are advertisers that do it at the level of exact but in the long term it takes a lot more work, however by putting it in broad agreement you ensure that from the moment that the negativity will not appear again.
Ah! I forgot, by clicking here you will go to the spreadsheet in which are the lists of provinces and municipalities as it is quite laborious to perform it.
If you liked the post, we have more posts in relation to PPC campaign management. In older Google Ads posts we have talked about how to set up a SKAG’s model campaign and how to do a Google Ads Audit in 45 steps. I hope you like the articles and that they are as useful as they are to me.
