One Negative Keyword No-No

It may seem intuitive to seasoned pros, but I’ve seen newbies make this mistake. With your negative keywords you don’t want to include an exact match keyword in your keywords list then cancel it out with the same exact match as a negative keyword. For example, if your exact match keyword is “yellow rotating widget” then using that same keyword match as a negative keyword will effectively tell the search engine not to use that keyword. Why would you do that?

The negative keyword feature is to tell the search engine that a particular keyword match is not right for your campaign. It’s best used when you have a broad match or a phrase match, but there are exact matches when the broader category that you don’t want included. For instance, if you sell rotating widgets in ever color except yellow then you might do this:

“rotating widget” = phrase match
yellow rotating widget = negative keyword match

You can do the same thing with “rotating widget” as a broad match. But I would use “yellow rotating widget” as a broad or phrase match then include it as a negative keyword. Use the negative keyword list to narrow your keyword matches within a broader array.