Improve Your PPC Campaign Results

One of the most overlooked pay-per-click (PPC) campaign tactics is neglecting to filter out “negative” keywords–that is, those keywords that can bring you loads of traffic that doesn’t convert. Not only does the traffic fail to convert, you’ve paid for each of those clicks.

Let’s say you’re an Internet Security company that specializes in preventing denial of service attacks and computer worms. The keyword “worms” may be an important search phrase for your company. However, it’s also very generic and can also apply to the popular Internet game called Worms and your garden variety earthworm.

Bidding on this keyword may drive up impressions and traffic but you could see little in the way of conversions.

For the “worm” example, negative keywords could include: worms, earthworms, garden worms, red worms, worms 2, worms armageddon, can of worms, and intestinal worms (egads!), among others.

Filtering out these negative keywords is critical to campaign success because it improves conversions and reduces your cost per click. That’s because once you indicate in the PPC tool you’re using (i.e. Google, Yahoo, etc.) the negative keywords for each ad campaign, your ad will not appear for these keywords.

This same concept is particularly good to use if you’re a retailer selling consumer items, such as shoes. For example, let’s say you’re selling ladies red flip flops. You would use negative keywords to filter out all other colors of flip flops plus “heeled” sandals and other descriptive words. This way your ad appears only for search phrases such as “ladies sandals,” “flip flops,” and “red flip flops” (to name a few).

To determine your list of negative keywords, you can use keyword tools that come with each PPC tool or you can use fee tools such as WordTracker.  These tools tell you which keywords people have used in the last month (or year) and the search volume for each keyword.

You can also use your Web analytics or site logs to determine which keywords people used to find your Website but have no bearing on your products or services. This information is important because it’s specific to your site versus the “global” information provided by keyword search tools. Analyze your site logs and then add the non-converting keywords to your list of potential negative keywords.

In addition, you can use the search engines themselves to find negative keywords. Using the search phrase “red flip flop sandals” in Google, you can see that Google also recommends search phrases “wedding flip flops,” “men’s flip flops,” “leather flip flops,” and “rainbow flip flops”. If you’re selling ladies red flip flops, then you don’t want your ads appearing for “men’s flip flops,” so add this negative keyword to add to your list. And depending on your flip flop, you may want to include “wedding flip flop” as well.

Obviously, you can spend a lot of time researching negative keywords across all three search engines – Google, Yahoo! Search, and Bing – plus analyzing your various PPC reports. You can perform these tasks manually or you can use a tool that automates this task for you (small pitch!) such as our Yield Web Marketing Suite, which features a PPC module that manages your keyword list, including negative keywords, in real time.

If you missed it, be sure to read Part One of our SEO Strategies Series: Powering Up Your Keywords. In this article, you’ll learn how to choose the right keywords – whether for PPC or SEO – that best describe your business and products.