Inspiration for this blog post came from some work I have been doing recently on optimising SCL’s Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising campaigns in Google Adwords and Yahoo!. I have been using a portfolio-based bid management tool called SearchForce (who SCL has recently formed a partnership with to represent the tool within EMEA) as well as our Web Analytics tool Unica NetInsight, to help with the streamlining process …Ok endorsement over!
Keyword Research
I set up a new Google Adwords PPC campaign within the SearchForce tool and conducted some keyword research with the aid of the keyword generation tool in SearchForce (powered by Keyword Discovery) and also used some other free tools, including a nice free keyword research tool from Wordtracker.
Its important to try and use more than one keyword research tool when conducting keyword research, allowing you to use a triangulation approach to your research. Also remember that these keyword tools are there to provide suggestions, but it is always worth including some of your own knowledge of your products or service when building your keyword lists.
Once I identified some keywords to bid on, I set the keywords predominately as broad match keyword terms and decided to let the new campaign run for a few days to collect some data and allow me to further refine my keyword list.
Match Types: Broad Match Keywords
Several match type options exist within the search engines, including broad match, phrase match and exact match. There is also an embedded match option within Google Adwords and an option to build in a negative match list of keywords, which this post is focusing on (Google Learning Center has a useful article on the different keyword match types).
Broad match is the default setting with in Google Adwords and Yahoo! for your keywords (or keyword phrases as they may be more accurately defined). Using broad match mean that your ads will show whenever that keyword is typed, as well as when other similar terms are used in the user’s search query.
For example: If your keyword was Used Cars and was set as a broad match keyword, then your ad could also appear for the following: -
Buy Used Cars
Used Cars Dealer
Used Cars Locator
Used and New Cars
Mechanic for Used Cars
I’m never ever going to buy a Used Car
This means that your ads will reach a wider audience, but bear in mind that in doing so, you may be reaching a partly off target aaudience. Using the example above, if you sell used cars but do not offer any mechanic services, then you could be paying money for irrelevant traffic, such as users who searched for Mechanic for Used Cars, or even when someone searches I’m never ever going to buy a Used Car.
This is where some further investigation needs to be conducted within your Web Analytics data, to help you build a relevant negative keyword list.
Investigating the Actual/Referrer Keyword
Looking into the web data further, it is well worth investigating the actual or referrer keyword phrases used, which is often included in the Search Referrer (see the WAA standard Web Analytics Definitions document for more information) and is recorded within the log files and can be accessed through your Web Analytics package. Investigating the actual/referrer keyword phrase used is a great way of identifying off target or irrelevant keywords, which your ads are appearing for, which are often the result of using broad matching.
In the fictional example below (see screen shot), a TV retailer broad match bidding on the search term plasma tv is appearing for the search term history of plasma tvs. Now chances are, if they are purely an e-commerce site looking to make money from selling tvs online, then they are likely to want to make the word history a negative keyword.
Sample Paid Keyword Vs Actual Keyword Report (click to enlarge)
This will mean that in the future, anyone searching for the history of plasma tvs, will not be shown the tv retailer’s paid search ad. The tv retailer is likely to want to only pay for visitors who are in the market for buying a tv, and are not likely to want to pay for someone searching for the history of plasma tvs.
Free is often another popular negative keyword, if you are offering a paid for product or service, as free often is a popular addition to many search engine queries.
Building my Negative Keywords List
I am in the early stages of optimising a Google Adwords campaign I have set up for SearchForce, our Pay Per Click (ppc) bid management tool.
I have several broad match keyword phrases that include the term ppc as a keyword and this has meant that on several occasions, our ads have appeared for the keyword pda. This was identified by investigating the actual/referrer keyword report within the Web Analytics data and therefore made a good addition to my negative keyword list, which I am in the early stages of compiling (see screen shot below).
Sample Negative Keywords List (click to enlarge)
Appearing for pda when ppc is the search term that you are bidding on, also highlights the Search Engines’ slightly liberal approach to broad matching a user’s search terms with the paid for keyword phrases that are being bid on. It also demonstrates the importance of investigating the actual/referrer keywords being used.
Identifying Exact Match Keyword Phrases
To avoid paying for terms that are not relevant to your ads, keep an eye on your referrer/actual keyword data to help you identify your negative match keywords, as well as helping you to identify good candidates for exact match keyword phrases.
A recent Greenlight Search PPC webinar that I viewed, discussed the benefits of identifying exact match keyword terms. If you can identify search terms to make exact match terms then you can, according to Greenlight, save up to 80% on the cost of that phrase when compared with the cost of that phrase as a broad match term. This is because you end up paying extra for any additional keywords added to the broad match keyword phrase.
Taking the example in the earlier screen shot, the plasma tv products search term could be a good candidate for an exact match phrase. According to Greenlight’s webinar, It can be much cheaper if you make this an exact match term.
Not sure how true this is, as I have read other articles that say you pay more for exact match terms. But in any case, it can’t hurt to build up a list of exact match keyword terms as it helps you to narrow down your audience, potentially saving you money in the long term, by ensuring your ads are more precisely targeted. Also, providing you are properly tracking and attributing conversions, exact matching allows you to customise your bidding, letting you bid higher for those exact match phrases that convert at a higher rate.
Clearly though if you have a keyword list longer than “War and Peace”, then you would only want to do this on your higher volume or higher converting keyword phrases.
Do not rely solely on keyword conversions
However, bear in mind the conversion rate of each keyword should not be your sole factor for making a decision on which keywords to cull and which to keep. This is because some keywords can contribute to a conversion event indirectly.
e.g. A tv retailer broad match bidding on sony tvs has their ad appear and clicked when a person uses the search term information on sony tvs on Monday, then their ad appears again on Friday when the same person searches for buy sony tvs, clicks the ad and makes a purchase.
In this example, the conversion event is likely to be attributed to the last search term by default, but with some tweaking in your Web Analytics package, you could attribute some value/weighting to each of the search terms used by a visitor in a given time period (defined attribution window). This way, you are less likely to cull keywords that are actually have an impact on the final conversion event (the actual purchase!).
In Summary
It is important to drill into the actual or referrer keyword data to help you identify candidate keywords for your negative match keyword list. You should try and make it a habit to regularly investigate the referrer/actual keyword reports for your paid search campaigns, helping to keep your negative keyword lists up-to-date.
Also, try and gain a good understanding of the different match type options available to you and then use them to your advantage, helping you to more precisely target your paid search ads to the appropriate audiences.
Final thought of the day… Investigating your referrer/actual keyword phrases will give you some very useful insights.
What are your views? Have I missed anything? Do you agree or disagree with me? Please let me know by adding a comment… 
July 14th, 2008 at 6:00 pm
[...] PPC Campaigns: Building a negative keywords list [...]
July 16th, 2008 at 1:48 pm
I am currently looking into using SearchForce…what do you think about it? Any thoughts, comments or advise? thanks.
July 16th, 2008 at 2:43 pm
Hi John,
Thanks for your comment.
Before I answer your questions, just bear in mind that I work for a company that represent the SearchForce tool in EMEA, saying that I will do my best to be factual and not too biased (ok slight disclaimer out the way).
From using SearchForce for our own in house PPC campaigns, I have found it to be a very useful tool that I am already seeing impressive results from. e.g. For a particular Google ad group we were running, the average CPC was at around £2.80 a click. I decided to take this ad group and combine it with another ad group from Yahoo! and managed them together in a portfolio. I then set the target CPC to £2.00 for the portfolio and set it to maximise clicks. I checked back about a week later and the average CPC had dropped down to around £1.60 (partly due to combining with the cheaper Yahoo! ad group), but the overall number of clicks had increased considerable, when compared to managing the keywords without the aid of the portfolio management.
I also sat in on the recent e-consultancy ppc supplier showcase in London (which included presentations from TradeDoubler, WebTrends, Channel Advisor, Efficient Frontier, DC Storm and MakeMeTop) and based on that, I think I can safely say that SearchForce has a very good ppc bid optimisation offering and I think they are definitely one to consider.
One piece of advice I can give when thinking about bid optimisation tools is try and focus on a portfolio based bid optimisation tool, as apposed to a rule based bid optimisation tool as you are very likely to see greater returns. The majority of the tools out there at the moment are rule based, SearchForce however is portfolio based.
Example of how portfolio based bidding works:-
Keyword 1
Option A - £2 = 10 clicks
Option B - £2.50 = 20 clicks
Rule based - means it would stick to £2 (Option A) and get you 10 clicks
Keyword 2
Option A - £2 = 15 clicks
Option B - £1.50 = 10 clicks
Rule based - means it would stick to £2 (Option A) and get you 15 clicks
Portfolio based bidding takes into account the whole portfolio of keywords and looks to bid for the best return. Using the example of a target CPC of £2… This might mean bidding above £2 in some cases and less than £2.00 in other cases, but overall sticking to a £2.00 CPC goal for the whole portfolio of keywords. So in the example above, a portfolio based bid optimisation tool would bid to Option B for Keyword 1 and Option B for Keyword 2 meaning that the total clicks received are 30 instead of 25, while still sticking within the CPC target of £2.00, but while maximising clicks.
Remember though that I am just using CPC (Cost per Click) to illustrate this example, if you set up conversion tracking, then optimizing to a CPA (Cost per Acquisition) or ROAS% (Return on Ad Spend) goal may make more sense.
Finally, see this recent blog post regarding SearchForce, which may give a slightly less bias response to your questions: http://www.primevisibility.com/blog/?p=62
Apologies for the essay reply, I think portfolio based bidding vs. rule based bidding could make a good blog post for the future!
I hope that helps a little.
Thanks,
Chris
September 8th, 2008 at 3:23 am
Hi Chris,
Thanks for this informative post.
Could you advise what is the typical cost of running a bid management tool like SearchForce?
Thanks,
Ivan
October 6th, 2008 at 9:51 am
Hi Ivan,
Typically for bid optimisation tools like SearchForce, you are looking at fees based on a percentage of advertising spend. Typically in the low to mid single digit figures. A bargain, when you can see 25 - 30% plus improvements in the efficiency of your PPC campaigns.
Thanks,
Chris