The reason Google AdWords is so effective is to due to the ability to appear at the right time for the right audience. Since AdWords works on a pay-per click basis it is imperative to make sure your ad is only appearing for highly relevant searches. To generate the right traffic from your AdWords, you need to come up with the perfect combination of keywords, using a variety of unique match types. There is one match type however that seems to be neglected in AdWords campaigns. Negative Keywords.

Maybe people have a certain disdain for Negative Keywords, or perhaps they’re simply unaware but again this is another absence we see in an alarming amount of campaigns. Negative Keywords work entirely different to other keywords match types by rather than triggering your ad to appear on Google they actually prevent your ad from being shown for particular search terms.

People that are new to AdWords often consider this to be counter productive to their marketing but soon understand the benefits once they realise the amount of money they have wasted through irrelevant clicks. As we know since you are paying every time your ad is clicked on you need to make sure every click has the potential to lead to money in your pocket.

Google loves to shows your ad and help you get lots of clicks (they’re good like that) but what Google deems relevant and what you consider relevant are often two very different things.

Take a local removalist company for example. They’re a two guys and a truck business that services home and office furniture removals. They use a variety of keyword match types for search such as ‘removalists’, ‘furniture removalists’ and ‘home removals’ but have no Negative Keywords. Although they are offer these very specific services their ads often appear for traffic for a variety of searches from ‘rubbish removals’ to ‘pest removals’. By implementing Negative Keywords to eliminate traffic for searches that are slightly similar but will never lead to work, they will be able to prevent theirs ads from appearing for these searches that just don’t match up.

 This is just one scenario of a universal problem. Think about your industry or products that you are advertising for. Is there anything that may be considered similar but is really just irrelevant?

For most most people the answer is yes and most people will be wasting a tonne of money because of it. Developing a Negative Keyword List takes time and is never finished. In order to develop an effective strategy you need a lot of knowledge about what works and you need to constantly monitor changes in search terms.