Real Estate Blog: Use Google Adwords Pay Per Click Advertising For Your Real Estate Business Part 20

August 19, 2011

Using Negative Keywords

Google Adwords allows you to specify what words or phrases you don’t want your ads being shown for when someone searches for those specific words.  If you know of certain keywords you don’t want your ads to be found under then you should enter them into Adwords right away before starting your Adowrds campaigns.  Usually you will find out what keywords you don’t want associated with your ads by looking at your click reports and seeing what keywords caused your ad to be displayed and clicked.  Google Adwords will actually tell you the exact search phrase that was used for each time someone clicks one of your ads.  The more clicks your ads get, the more you’ll be able to know what keywords you want and which ones you don’t.  This helps increase your conversion rate and lower the amount you spend on Adwords campaigns by excluding the searchers who are looking for something you don’t offer.

Negative Keywords are particularly useful if you’re using a lot of Broad Match or Phrase Match keyword phrases.  The reason they’re useful for Broad Match keywords is Adwords will show your ads for words similar to your Broad Match keywords, yet you don’t know exactly what those similar words will be until you have seen the keyword phrases used by people who have clicked your ads.

The reason Negative Keywords are useful for Phrase Match is that someone might type out a keyword phrase matching one of your Phrase Match keyword phrases but add in an extra word that clearly indicates you aren’t offering what they’re looking for and that therefore they’re not a good prospect for you.  For instance, let’s say one of your Phrase Match keyword phrases was “Toronto condos”.  Someone types out “Toronto condos power of sale” in Google.  (Power Of Sale means foreclosure in Ontario, Canada).  Such condos are often left by the foreclosed occupant in poor condition – unclean and sometimes damaged and therefore difficult to sell.  Yet many people don’t know this (especially bargain hunters) and will still come looking for foreclosed condos.

If you don’t want to be involved with such condo deals then you’d want to have the following negative keywords in your Adwords list (The format for entering Negative Keywords is using the ‘-‘ or minus sign before each word).  Those Negative Keywrods might be:

-    “power of sale”
-    foreclosure
-    foreclosed
-    foreclose
-    foreclosing
-    “bank sale”

Filed under: Marketing Tips,SEO For Realtor Websites

Tags: Advanced Strategies, branding, email training tips, Google, Google AdSense, Google AdWords, Internet Marketing, marketing, online marketing, Pay Per Click, PPC, prospecting, real estate course, real estate education, real estate educators, real estate internet marketing, real estate internet marketing tips, real estate internet training, real estate search engine training, Search Engine Optimization, search engine workshops, SEO, Yahoo Overture