Negative Keyword Help
-
I am working on compiling a list of both broad and phrase-matched negative keywords for my AdWords campaigns, but I feel like I am encountering a problem.
We offer payment gateway services and business owners often search terms including online payment gateway, Internet payment gateway, credit card payment gateway, etc to see our ads. However, we have been getting bad leads from consumers searching for terms such as online payment, online payments, online bill pay, and various other phrases regarding consumers paying their bills online. We work specifically with business owners who want to accept payments and NOT consumers who want to make payments.
Here is my dilemma: If I have "online payment gateway" or [online payment gateway] as keywords as well as "online payment" or "online payments" as negative keywords, then I will be blocking business owners from seeing my ads when they search the term online payment gateway. Correct?
Is there any way to get around this? Am I wrong?
-
I am in the middle of re-vamping my PPC marketing campaigns. Once I have more data on the results of my changes, I may take you up on that offer for a free review. Thank you for all of your help!
Regards,
Meghan -
Hi Meghan,
Broad modified keywords are a new variation of broad match. They are a hybrid between broad and phrase match types. Broad modified keywords must use all the keywords.(like phrase) but they allow the keywords to be in any order. Broad modified keywords main benefit is they will not be triggered by synonyms or keywords the Google/Bing believe are 'relevant". Synonyms and 'relevant' keywords are what cause trouble for broad match...sometimes they are relevant, but often they are not relevant...broad modified does not have this issue.
To create broad modified keywords you just need to put a "+" in front of each word, and have a match type of broad. While this can be time consuming to create manually, here is an awesome broad match generator. http://www.acquisio.com/ppc/google-adwords-modified-broad-match-keyword-tool/
Use Editor... just export to excel ...all of your keywords, campaign, group, match type & dest url. Make sure your keyword column in Excel is set to "text"...if its set to 'general' it will create problems when you paste '+keyword" back later. Copy your keyword column, paste into the above Acquisio page, click the 'generate broad match button" , copy the new broad modified keywords and paste them back onto your spreadsheet. Make sure all keywords have broad match type. Save excel file and import back into AdWords editor. You now have all keywords with a broad modified match type. Should only take 5 minutes. I would then recommend pausing broad match types...you will begin receiving much more targeted traffic, and will not need to micro manage your negative keywords.
By the way, I offer a free PPC marketing review. Do you have 30 minutes to chat with me? I can really help your PPC campaigns. Private message me if you are interested.
Branden
-
Thanks, Branden!
I did know know that I could sort through my keywords in this way. It does seem like a lot of work, but I am willing to do it if it provides me with better results. That is the goal, after all.
I am unfamiliar with broad modified keywords. Could you explain this a little more?
Regards,
Meghan -
The best way I have found to create negative keywords is by going through the search queries. I do this every month for my clients. It takes some time to do this, especially at the beginning, when you don't have a large negative keyword list. But as time goes by you will have developed an extensive negative keyword list.
Set a broad date range, go into an ad group >>> keyword tab>> Details drop down >> select Search terms All. This will show you every search term that triggered your keyword. Sort by impressions and start with the most impressions. If this is a term that you don't want to show your ad for, just check the box and click "add as negative". This will add this term as a negative exact match for this ad group. It takes a while to go through all of the search terms, but it will pay off in the long run. This is also a good way to add keywords.
Another thing that will help you is to stop using broad match for your keywords, ..broad modified, phrase & exact match are the only match types I use for keywords. This will give you much more targeted search queries.
-
Trenton,
The keyword airaisia payment online by debit does not sell. That is a keyword consumers used to find our ads--but I do not work with consumers. I work with business owners, which means any clicks or conversions are a waste of money from this term. However, I do understand what you are saying.
Also, I must add how much I love Excel's concatenate function. It saves massive amounts of time!
Thanks again for your help!
-
I think you mistook my post, I would recommend using exact for BOTH the positive and negative keywords.
In your case, I believe, the positive keywords being exact would solve all your problems. One, make sure these signups are coming from PPC, then for example, why not add [airasia payment online by debit] to your keyword list. You've already told me it sells and you would be able to track the metrics for this keyword exactly. Then, take the list that goes on and on, and export it to an excel sheet, add those keywords to your PPC campaigns. Make sure you put the [] around each though. Excel can help you do this very quickly if you are familiar with excel functions. Just my $.02. Hope it helps.
Trenton
-
Thank you, Kerri.
I have been analyzing the Search Terms in Dimensions to see what phrases people are searching to find our site. I have been building a list of negative keywords since my last post. Some of the negative keywords include:
- "abdomen" (yes, we have even gotten clicks for this term!)
- "belks"
- "car payment"
- "electricity payment"
- "make bill payment online"
- pay cell bill
- gas bill
I am hoping this helps solve my problem!
-
One other thing to consider is finding a list of online payments people may be looking for, and add those as negatives. I searched for 'online bill pay directory' and found that Chase has a list of people that they will do a bill pay for at http://chasepayeedirectory.com/chasebiller/home.html. It's in flash and not easily grabbed in text format, but it's a start.
I wrote a post about finding these types of lists and other negative keyword brainstorming ideas at http://moz.com/blog/negative-keywords-for-positive-roi. It may be of help in finding lists of terms to exclude.
-
I feel like I should not use exact match negative keywords in this situation. Consumers are not searching for exact match phrases. For instance, one of the search phrases a consumer used to sign up on our website through an ad was: airasia payment online by debit.
If I list -[online payment] as an exact negative keyword, this consumer would still see my ad. Even adding the phrase -"online payment" as a negative keyword would allow this consumer to see my ads since the exact phrase within the entire keyword is payment online and not online payment.
Other keywords consumers search and see my ads are:
- aircell online bill payment
- airtel landline online payment through credit card
- allen online payment
- at&t pay bill online
- best buy online bill payment
- boost mobile online payment
The list goes on and on . . .
I just do not know what to do. I feel like I need to either choose between blocking legitimate clients or allowing bad conversions.
-
around your keyword for exampleonline payment gateway should be [online payment gateway]. This will make it so only the exact search will return the results. I would also suggest making your negative keywords exact when possible as well.This is what we used to solve this problem and has been extremely effective.
Trenton
-
A negative exact match should not exclude your search term. For example:
**-[online payment] **will allow online payment gateway to show.
Check this post by Google and look at the chart of possible combinations - http://adwords.blogspot.co.uk/2007/11/adwords-optimization-tips-more-on.html
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Unsolved How should I update the grouping of keywords in a google ads account
hi, I have a google adwords account running for a while in a fairly competitive market in a major city so there is only one geo location with many suburbs or council areas as popular searched. I have keywords that are 2-4 words long and very similar. I have had one keyword in its own campaign, several in one campaign and a location campaign. The location campaign has several adgroups for specific suburbs. My question is that the most popular search terms are similar but in different campaigns and I am wondering if this is not the best way. for example I have these keywords in separate campaigns as exact match and phrase match
Paid Search Marketing | | salliWW
rubbish removal
rubbish removal near me
rubbish removal Washington But the way google uses exact match seems to be changing and I am concerned these would be best in one adgroup. Also these keywords trigger similar phrases, for example, waste removal. Is it best to put them in one campaign with one ad group or one campaign with separate adgroups, or leave as is. As competition has increased I need to bid for top of page now and need to keep budget rises as little as possible..0 -
How Do I Track AdCenter Keyword Data in Google Analytics?
Like everyone else, I am looking for new ways to gather as much keyword data as I can in the wake of the dreaded (not provided) epidemic. This question focuses on keyword data from Paid Search. We all know this is very simple with AdWords because the data is right there in Google Analytics. MSN adCenter, however, is a different story as these parameters need to be added to the end of each destination URL. Here are the parameters I'm using: utm_source=Bing&utm_medium=cpc&utm_term={QueryString}&utm_content={AdID}&utm_campaign=Leads Everything is working well with the exception of {QueryString} which is returning nothing. I would really like to solve this issue because I do not have the time to add specific parameters for each keyword in all of my campaigns. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
Paid Search Marketing | | IDASEO0 -
Adwords Keyword Quality Score changes when keyword is paused
Today I was pausing a bunch of low quality score keywords for a client, the thing is, once I paused the keywords, the quality score would immediately change. For example, a number of keywords that had a QS of 3 while they were running, immediately changed to 1 once paused. Out of curiosity I un-paused one of them and it remained at 1. Has anyone else experienced this and/or have an explanation? Cheers
Paid Search Marketing | | David_ODonnell0 -
Could longtail keywords really produce up to 80% more organic traffic long-term?
I was listening to a podcast on site visibility's website and they were discussing www.hittail.com which is a piece of software which analyzes lists your
Paid Search Marketing | | whitbycottages
visitor stream in real-time and provides actionable list of precisely which
keywords the website should be targeting to dramatically grow your organic
search traffic using long tail key words. The say they can come up with a list of long tail keywords which the
website could easily rank for hopefully straightaway in the top five positions
on Google and other search engines by creating a blog post are some relevant
content. Or you could use the information to form some anchor text links etc They say it's possible to produce up to 80% more traffic organically
once you are aware of which keywords are being overlooked by the website and
then produce the relevant content. The theory is that most people focus on the high traffic short tail
keywords and overlook the long tail keywords and I got to admit I actually fall
into that category unfortunately. Anybody uses particular website? And what is your experience of targeting the
longtail keywords have they produce good results ?0 -
PPC Keyword Ranking
The SEOmoz PRO tool shows how keywords rank in the organic part of the SERPs. Does anyone know if there is another tool out there that shows the same thing for ranking in the ads section of the SERPs? Also, does anyone know the winning lottery numbers (any lottery will do, I'm not fussy!). Thanks Neil
Paid Search Marketing | | mccormackmorrison0 -
My client's resort, ME Cancun would like to rank for the keyword “Complete ME” and related modifiers. So any advice or ideas you have to improve our performance on this keyword is appreciated.
ME Cancun went all-inclusive, and their all-inclusive package is called
Paid Search Marketing | | Melia
“Complete ME.” Here is their website: www.me-cancun.com. They are concerned because although we are buying keyword “Complete ME” in
Google, but they are not showing up very high for this keyword in organic
search results. So any advice or ideas you have to improve our performance on this
keyword is much appreciated.0 -
In Google Adwords, can I create negative dollar-amount keywords?
example of negative keywords: -$40 driving lessons -35 dollar driving lessons The driving lessons I'm selling are $55 an hour, so I obviously don't want unqualified leads chewing through my budget when they clearly don't want to spend $55 on a lesson. I already have the price mentioned in my ads, but I want to negative out the dollar amounts because people are still stupid enough to click without reading the ad. Any help will be appreciated! Matt
Paid Search Marketing | | strilliams0 -
Keyword tool for Yahoo ads?
Hi guys, Anyone knows a good keywords tool for Yahoo Ads and Bing Advertising? - We are interested to see the search volumes for these 2 search engines (all tough they are together now, people still have searching preferences and usualy only use one of them. - We need to see global search volumes as well as geo-specific data (country level) Thanks in advance
Paid Search Marketing | | tolik10