One thing most people don’t think about when creating a negative keyword list for keyword phrases or keywords that have two words that make up one meaning.
For example, if you are selling coffee tables online through adwords or through a different PPC program, you would instantly think that some great words are discount if you sell high end coffee tables. You may want to try kitchen since coffee tables usually aren’t in the kitchen but kitchen tables are.
Most people remember to add in keywords like Wholesale if you are not a wholesaler, thrift or used if you are not selling used ones or havind a yard sale where you are selling your old coffee table. Some people even think to use terms like yard sale, cheap or expensive to further narrow down their keyword list. Other people even use things like colors if they only sell certain colors so you can block people looking for red coffee tables or green coffee tables when you only sell black coffee tables. You may also even try to narrow it down by the material the coffee table is made of by using terms like wooden, wood, painted, marble, etc… However, even when people are advanced and get all of those negative keywords in, I still almost always see people forget one thing that can really narrow down the results and help you bring in the best ROI.
On these two word keywords and phrases, if you are on broad match you are going to show up for everything on earth. It is very risky and can be very expensive, especially if you are just using general terms like coffee table. So it is important to not only work at the types of negative keywords I mentioned above, but also break those two word keywords up into individual words and further block untargeted traffic.
Coffee for example could bring back results for coffee beans, coffee shops, tables for coffee shops and other terms that aren’t relevant to the coffee tables you are selling. Tables for examples can also bring in a ton of other types of tables that could be similar, but chances are they are not targeted like folding tables or even things that aren’t furniture like tables of contents if your coffee table has storage or drawers in it. Although the search volume pulled back from these keyword phrases and two word keywords may not be huge, you can definitely help to start cutting down the wasted clicks and spend by remembering to break up the keyword phrases and add in the negative terms for each keyword that makes up the two word keyword phrase. It may not make a huge different day to day, but when you look over a long period of time, those clicks really do add up. This is a mistake that many newer and even some advanced Search Marketers make and one that can easily be avoided by just remember to double check your keywords and keyword lists.
Please feel free to leave a message if you have any questions or want me to give you some ideas for negative keywords for your campaigns as well.
