If your pay-per-click ads don’t take enough negative keywords into account, you could be spending more on them than they’re earning.
Every visitor that reaches your website or makes an ad impression by searching for a negative keyword is costing you money
The best way to to make sure only the right people see your ads is to soup them up with the biggest possible list of unwanted keyword modifiers. But how can you discover new negative keywords when it feels like you already know them all?
1. Crack Open Your Dictionary
Homophones are the bane of accurate keyword targeting, since they can mean your ad gets shown to someone looking for a totally different service.
For example, a person searching for dinner glasses might end up seeing ads for your optometry website if your PPC ads aren’t precise enough.
Eliminating negative keywords related to double meanings can prevent this, so it’s worth having a quick look at the definitions of your current keywords.
2. Check Local Directories
Local business names can sometimes be similar, even though the services offered are entirely different. If you include the name of your business as a keyword in your directed ads, make sure you aren’t paying for impressions or clicks from visitors who weren’t looking for your services at all.
In addition to your local directory, you can also give online local business directories a try. These sites can help you ensure that you find similarly-named companies that don’t have a presence elsewhere.
3. Examine Your Keyword Data
The quickest and easiest way to find new negative keywords is to scan through the list of search terms that brought new visitors to your website.
Not every visitor actually meant to get to your site, especially if they clicked through a misplaced advertisement. If you see any terms that don’t match the services offered on your website, you can add them to your list and cut down costs on useless ads even more.
4. Learn The Auto-complete Alphabet
If you feel like you can’t image a single new negative keyword, you need to do one more step before finalizing your list.
In incognito mode on your browser, pull up the search engines you expect to show your ads, and enter in your keyword with an extra letter after it. The autocomplete window should appear and suggest new terms to you. For example, “keyword a” might have the suggestion “keyword apple.”
You can use negative results from the suggestions to bolster your ad efficiency, so it’s a good idea to get suggestions for your keyword and every letter of the alphabet.
PPC advertising can cost you greatly if your terms aren’t refined. By taking a few hours to ensure that your ads are precisely targeted at the right potential visitors, you could both limit marketing costs and increase ad effectiveness.
