Ok, so I know we have beaten this cliche’ to the ground, but not every keyword is created equal. Obviously, there are keywords that you want nowhere near your campaigns, that may drive ‘bad’ or unwanted traffic to your page. If you want to raise your quality score, and make sure you don’t get this garbage traffic, we are going to need to add some negative keywords. That is just the way it is. You may be thinking aloud, “traffic is never bad.”
This is what we mean by bad traffic. Say you sell basketballs on your website, and someone can find you with a search of “basketball games” unless you specify otherwise. If they are coming to your website thinking they are going to buy NBA2k11, or score some Miami Heat tickets, then that would be considered “bad” traffic.
Take a look at your keywords, and think of any other words that would be associated with them, that would give you unwanted traffic, and add them as negative keywords right away. Your cost per acquisition will thank you immediately.
One of the best things about search query report is that you can always add any negative keywords that are right from the report, as well. This would be advisable to do every few days, as proper Adwords management. The more you keep a handle on this, the more money you will save.
Make sure as well, that when you are adding negative keywords, you will most likely want to use phrase or exact match types, or else you may alienate keywords that you would actually want to show for. For example, if you added “basketball tickets” into your negative keyword maker, if would also exclude the word “basketball” which you are trying to rank for.
Use them early, and check them frequently. Negative Keywords will change your world.
