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As I do my keyword research for a PPC campaign, I make two different lists. One list is for the keywords that I am interested in using. The other is a list of any negative keywords I discover.

Negative keywords are essential for proper PPC Management. I lump negative keywords in to the category of PPC basics. Why are they so important? They keep irrelevant keywords from triggering your ads to appear when a search is done. This means it keeps the irrelevant clicks away, which costs you just as much as the relevant. It also increases your click through rate (CTR), which improves your quality score. For those who don’t know, negative keywords are words that are related to a keyword theme, but unrelated to the product or service the ad groups are built around. Here are some methods I use to identify negative keywords.

1. Keep a list of common negative keywords.

You will find there are some negative keywords that are common among many products and services. It’s good to make a list of these commonly used negative keywords to help save time on identifying negative keywords in the future. For example, most products and services PPC campaigns are built around are not free. In this case, “free” would need to be a negative keyword. “Free” is probably a negative keyword that you will use time and time again - unless you are promoting something that is “free”. Once you have your list, the keywords that you may use off of it may differ from one campaign to the next. Just use good judgment and you will find this list very useful.

2. Use keyword research tools.

There are many keyword research tools out there; such as, Wordtracker, KeyCompete, or Google’s Keyword Tool. The thing to highlight here is, many of these tools will give you relevant keyword ideas, this is where you may find many negative keywords. However, they will also give you irrelevant keyword ideas. They will give you an idea of how competitive keyword phrases are, which is not completely accurate. They will give you an idea of the search volume a keyword has, which is not completely accurate. The point is, they will give you an idea.

3. Use Googles search query report.

Once your Adwords campaign has generated a few hundred clicks, you will be able to run a search query report and dig down deeper into the traffic. The great thing about this report is, it tells you what the people, who clicked on your ad, actually typed into the search engine to bring up your ad. This works best when you have keywords set to the “broad” match type.

This report is a great way to uncover the way people search on topics in that particular niche. It’s an excellent tool to uncover negative keywords at the ad group level, as well as the campaign level.

4. Use site analytics.

Analytic tools such as All Stats or Google Analytics reveal possibilities for negative keywords similarly as stated above; by telling you what keyword phrases visitors came to your site on.

You can dig even deeper with these tools and get very specific about the traffic sources. For instance, you may see that a lot of your traffic is coming out of state, which might not be applicable to your marketing strategy. You would then add all states that weren’t applicable as negative keywords to you campaign.

Use these tools to help get the gears in your brain turning. Use the data as a guide, but in by no means, as solid factual information that will formulate your campaign strategy. That can only come from the data your campaign gathers and with testing, testing, and more testing.