Pay per click campaigns can be very well managed and some …
… get kind of neglected. For in-house pay per click managers as well as campaign professionals, one of the biggest areas of carelessness is negative keywords.
Negative keywords are instructions to your pay per click campaign that tells it “don’t show my ad copy” if a search word, term or phrase is included in the inquiry.
An example would be Google AdWord and Bing adCenter campaigns that I run for a very successful MINI Cooper automobile dealership in Florida. We have to constantly monitor the keyword phrases that are used to view their pay per click ads.
How does a bad keyword affect a pay per click campaign?
Many people that type in “mini refrigerator”, “mini scooter” or “mini dress” have the chance of seeing some MINI Cooper ad copy from our competitors’ sites because of this style of oversight. At the very least this decreases CTR (click thru rate) which reduces the keyword quality scores and that causes an increase in the cost of keyword bids for the same ad position.
If that “mini dress” fan then decides that they are curious about the “mini cooper” car but really aren’t in the market for one, it can also cause an increase in conversion costs that ultimately affects the bottom line … PROFIT.
Keeping keywords in check by constantly monitoring and adjusting for negative keywords is essential for strong performance and maximum investment return for any pay per click campaign.
