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
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
-
Special Characters in Negative Keywords in Ads
Howdy, fellow mozzers, I came across this weird suggestion in my Bing account (screenshot link: https://dmitrii-regexseo.tinytake.com/tt/NDY3OTc5NF8xNDgyMzY4OA) It almost that the dollar sign in the negative keyword is acting like a wildcard character, or being disregarded completely. I did some tests, it seems that in Google Ads that is not happening. Does anyone have an idea if this is normal behavior? I have never seen this before.
Paid Search Marketing | | DmitriiK0 -
Adwords negative keywords / keyword lists conflicting?
Does any of you had any experience on large 5k+ shared negative keyword lists impacting normal campaign negative keywords in Adwords even if they are not selected on these campaigns? And a second question; does anyone know how selected negative keyword lists can be removed from a campaign? I seem to be able to add them but not to remove them... Cheers!
Paid Search Marketing | | hellemans0 -
3 domains, Same keywords targeting - Best way of managing this?
Hi, I manage 3 domains and am just about to start doing some Branded PPC (to start with) to promote these the problem is that that 2 of the domains sell the exactly same products under the same brand names. What is the most efficient way of setting this up. Obviously by setting up separate accounts and using the MCC I can manage the accounts accordingly, but i am going to be increasing my competition for my own brand terms. As far as i am aware google is not happy with you mixing 2 domains in one account? We also sell our products via a wholesale channel so there is competition with other competitors as well. The 3 sites is slightly different so has less overlap and its not until we hit generic terms that there is some form of competition, between site but i am not worried about this. Can you help? Regards Ben
Paid Search Marketing | | benjmoz0 -
Locate Poorly Trending Keywords in AdWords
At the campaign level I see my CTR has been suffering for the last week or two relative to the past few months. It could be a few bad actors casing the downward trend. How can I quickly and easily locate specific keywords that are trending in the wrong direction? Why filters will not work... They don't take change into account. I want to identify Keywords that were once doing well are now doing poorly. Filters will yield all keywords that are doing poorly which is not what I'm looking for. Obviously I could be missing something with filters but this is my understanding. A few other points to note... I have search partners turned on. I do not want to take this traffic into account in my analysis. I'd also like to determine if it might be an ad that's not performing as well as it once was. I assume the same method used to find poorly trending keywords can be applied to ads as well but if not, is there a solution for this?
Paid Search Marketing | | tatermarketing0 -
PPC seems to have had a seriously negative impact on organic rankings?!?
We've been targeting a keyword on behalf of a client for the last few months. The page had good content and had been steadily climbing the rankings. It reached a position of #12 and then suddenly dropped off. Within 2 weeks it was out of the top 50 and is now around the 10th or 11th page (useless). This drop off matched exactly with the cleint switching on a low level PPC campaign, driving traffic from this specific keyword. The stats on this have shown a really high bounce rate (so we'll need to ask some other questions about content) - but could this be the reason that organic stats have taken a hammering? If Google associated people landing n that page from that keyword (even though its paid) as not finding relevant content, I'm assuming this could have a negative impact on the organic rank? Any Thoughts Welcome....!!!
Paid Search Marketing | | Purestone0 -
A heads-up about problems with the new Google Adwords Keyword Planner tool
I noticed that when I was using this tool, the data in the tables would change, often by a lot (up to 50%) when I sorted the columns. (Did nothing else, just sorted.) Since I was starting a new campaign and really needed data, I contacted Google about this and was told: "I understand that the estimates are changing in the Keyword Planner tool when you sort the data. I reproduced this on my end as well and was able to confirm that this is a known technical issue on our end." "Unfortunately the information in the Keyword Planner Tool is currently not the best source of data for your analysis." They then went on to suggest I just test things blindly. So, what do you do to get information about keyword traffic and ppc estimates?
Paid Search Marketing | | Linda-Vassily0 -
targeting different keywords for site
A site i am working on seakayakingdevon.co.uk, currently optimising for sea kayaking wishes to target alternative keywords such as - canoeing, canoe trips etc. more importantly rank higher than a dedicated local canoeing center site. The issue is he provides kayaking trips and courses and not canoeing but believes a a large percent of his targeted market actual mistakenly searches for canoeing when they actually mean kayaking or simply have no preference - i.e kayaks are often confused with canoes especially with people who have no preference but are more inclined to search using terms related to canoeing, canoe day trip etc. As his site is geared to what he actually provides, I have advised that he would struggle to target such terms as he has no content relating to canoeing and risks the overall ranking positions and SEO efforts for sea kayaking terms.( As these would have to be diluted and would no longer relate to the actual page content.) What method could he deploy without sacrificing the sea kayaking optimisation? I realise he could optimise the site and content for both but question just how successful this would be when compared with the loss of dedicated sea kayaking audience. Is it really worth targeting keywords for service he doesn't provide? On a separate note the site is doing reasonably well since optmisation for localised serch terms but would like to target a wider UK audience as well i.e. tourism to the area. thanks
Paid Search Marketing | | Bristolweb0 -
Keyword domains for AdWords - duplicate content an issue
Hi guys, A client of mine has bought a raft of keyword domains for use in an AdWords campaign. This isn't my area of expertise, hence the question. They have a hosting account which can host an unlimited number of domains. Can they set up the domains with the same content on each site and then use AdWords to drive traffic to the sites? I've suggested they can use rel="canonical" to specify that the preferred site is the main site of the company which should bypass the duplicate content issue. Is this the best way to host the sites or is there a better alternative? Thanks in advance, Brendan.
Paid Search Marketing | | brendanbelladesign0