If you’re a business owner who hasn’t gotten the total deal of handling your Google Adwords account and only believed that there are few, accepted keywords that generate higher clicks and conversions without concrete knowledge on what negative keywords in PPC are, then keep on reading.

Negative keywords, also known as “negative match”, is defined by Google as, “a specific type of keyword that prevents your ad from being triggered by a certain word or phrase”. Your ads will not be visible to anyone who tries to search for that keyword or phrase. Here’s an example:

If you’re trying to sell “pure, dark chocolate desserts” online for people who are conscious about their health and only want to eat pure dark chocolate desserts, you don’t want your ads to be triggered by a keyword or phrase like “sweet desserts” or “chocolate desserts”.

Why? Because those two keywords are very generic, especially for users who are looking for more specific product descriptions. Consumers who lean on feature-specific products might trigger search key phrases such as “healthy dark chocolate desserts”, “healthy alternative for desserts”, “guilt-free chocolate desserts” or “best desserts for people with diabetes “.

In a nutshell, negative keywords are often determined by knowing your target audience’s consumer behavior — specifications on the products they look for, mainly.

Those negative keywords can be excluded when you’re creating a Search campaign in your Google AdWords so that it will not trigger impressions or click-through rates that doesn’t lead to conversion.

How do I start finding negative keywords?

The best way to figure out negative keywords is by looking for an updated data on user’s query search — none other than Google AdWords’ very own Google Ads Keyword Planner and Search Terms Report.

The Google Ads Keyword Planner is intended to find out the keywords that you can bid on for your campaign.

Question: Does it matter if you’re going to bid on a high-volume search keyword that has high competition or a low-volume search keyword but leans more towards the product description on your website’s landing page? Well, that will all depend on how you want to spend effectively on keyword bidding.

But what’s unknown to some is that you can also use Google Ads Keyword Planner for finding negative keywords. For example, if you search for the keyword “chocolate desserts”, you’ll be able to get results on related keywords that users are also looking for such as “healthy chocolate desserts”, with matching data result on search volume and competition.

If you find search key terms that is not directly relevant for your business, then it’s best to add them as negative keywords for your campaign.

Meanwhile, Search Terms Report (also found in your Google AdWords account) delivers a more accurate report on what specific search queries did people look up for and triggered your ads to show on their search results. You can almost immediately make a list on what keywords should you bid on and what negative keywords should you include in your campaign.

Always remember that when thinking of what keywords will you place your budget on, sort them in this manner:

• Bid on keywords that generate a good amount of impression, reach and something relevant to your product/service
• Be careful on bidding keywords that might promise high-search volume but might not perform well because it mismatches with your product offers (because unbeknownst to some owners, your landing page plays a huge factor on the search keywords that you bid)

Think of negative keywords this way: it will help you save a good amount of money from spending on unnecessary keyword bids.