Google ads can certainly bring you a lot of revenue, but you need to make sure that you are running Google ad campaigns the right way and not wasting your advertising budget. One thing that most advertisers overlook is negative keywords. So, if you haven’t yet created a common negative keyword list, you are probably not targeting your ads at the right audiences and spending your ad budget ineffectively. Once you start targeting negative keywords, you will witness an increase of somewhere around 5-20% in revenue.

So, what are negative keywords, and how can you use them to your benefit? Let’s find out!

What Are Negative Keywords?

To put it simply, a negative keyword is a word or phrase for which you don’t want an ad to be triggered. For instance, when you add the term “free” to your common negative keyword list, you’re actually telling Google Ads that you don’t want your ads to be shown for any Google Search term that contains the word “free”. It's an excellent way to stop showing your ads to people who are looking for freebies.

How to Find Negative Keywords?

There could be different ways to find the common negative keywords, and we have shortlisted a few for you.

1. Use the Google Keyword Planner Tool

You must have used the Google Keyword Planner Tool to find keywords you want to target for your ad campaigns. When you perform a keyword search, the tool brings out a lot of relevant keywords that people also search for. You can use these results to spot keywords that are not relevant to your business and you do not intend to bid for.

2. Use Your Search Terms Reports

The “Search Terms Reports” can be used to find out all queries for which your ad was triggered. You can easily categorize these queries into positive and negative keywords for your ad campaigns. Add the “low result” keywords to your common negative keyword list and save your marketing buck from being wasted.

3. Use Google Search

It is, probably, the simplest of the lot. A simple Google search can present you with a number of keywords, concepts, and products, allowing you to easily single out anything that’s not relevant to your business. For example, if you search “bike” in Google, you will get results for bike maintenance equipment, bike tours, stationary fitness bikes, and bike-sharing services. Of course, not all of them are relevant to your business, and you can add them to your common negative keyword list.

How to Create a Common Negative Keyword List?

Creating your negative keywords list is super-easy. Here is what you need to do to create one:

1. Browse the ad campaign to which you’d like to add negative keywords.
2. In the Keywords tab, click on Negative Keywords at the top.
3. Click on the ‘+’ icon.
4. Here, choose from the “Add Negative Keywords or Create New List” and “Use Negative Keyword List” options.
5. Add negative keywords to a particular ad group or ad campaign.
   

So, if you want to make efficient use of your budget and target the right audiences with your ad campaigns, create a common negative keyword list now.