I am often asked about how we get more leads for less money when we overhaul and manage client paid search programs. Experience helps, but being negative is important, too.
For all of you cynics and pessimists, this is not a rare opportunity to validate your glumness. Sorry. Getting negative in search engine marketing world means refining keyword lists to weed out unwanted searchers who aren’t really looking for you in the first place. You are simply subtracting words and phrases that don’t belong.
Adding negative keywords is similar to the process of adding keywords. The only difference is there is a minus symbol before the keyword. For example, say you are in higher education and looking for prospective students for a new graduate studies program in Art Therapy. An ad group may have these keywords:
art therapy program
art therapy graduate program
- pictures
- employment
- supplies
The negative keywords help keep the ad group targeted. So, in this example you are working to limit your ad impressions and your important click dollars to those leads focused on obtaining an education—not those looking for pictures, jobs, supplies, etc.
There are web analytics tools to show actual search queries and help flush out negative keywords. Good common sense goes a long way, too. The key is to look back after getting negative to see if click through rates and overall performance have improved.