Recently we’ve had several new customers with existing paid search campaigns come to us. As we have taken over these campaigns, we’ve come across a basic mistake that other providers make: failing to weed out negative keyword phrases.
This is a pretty basic tenet that, when done diligently, helps ensure that your ads appear in front of your target audience. When you set up your campaign in Google, you enter the keyword phrases that your customers search for (when looking for you or what you offer). Letting the algorithm automatically add keywords to your campaign appears to be where the issues arise. So instead, turn that off and monitor what search terms Google shows your ad for.
Note here that keyword phrases and actual search terms are different. If your company is an HVAC company located in Denver and you set a phrase of “Air conditioning repair near me”, the algorithm mostly gets it right. But if someone searches for Air conditioning repair Gainesville, and Google can’t determine where the searcher is, your ad may show. And get clicked on. And cost you.
But if you mark that term as a negative keyword phrase, that won’t happen again. And geography is just one way the algorithm is imprecise. Going with the same concept of an HVAC company, if someone search for RV heater repair, that probably isn’t a good lead. Marking it as a negative keyword means that Google won’t show your ad to future searches for that phrase.
Need help managing your campaign or understanding how to do this? Give Brian at call at 303-268-2245 ext.4