Using negative keywords helps you bring focus to your Pay Per Click (PPC) strategy and make it more efficient. By including only those keywords that are relevant to your product or service and excluding those that aren’t — the negative keywords — your ad appears in front of those who are most interested in what you have to offer. This, in turn, makes your money work harder by increasing its effectiveness.

One way to build a successful Pay Per Click (PPC) is to be clear about which audience you are targeting as well as those that you are not. Here is when using negative keywords benefits your campaign. For example, if you sell dog toys, you don’t want people looking for dog crates, dog beds or dog food to see your ad and click on it. This saves you money because you won’t have to pay for clicks from people who didn’t find what they were looking for and left without making a purchase. By excluding all closely-related — but irrelevant — keywords, those consumers who do click on your ad are more likely to follow through and make a purchase.

Types of Negative Keywords

Negative keywords used can be broken down into three categories: broad, phrase or exact match. Unlike positive keywords, you will also need to include close variations, synonyms and misspellings, along with plural and singular versions of them if you want them to be excluded.

Final Thoughts

Make sure that you choose your negative keywords carefully. Too many of them can restrict your ads so much that they reach too few consumers. It’s also important to know that your ad could appear in search results if there are close variations of the negative keywords included in the search.