Google Negative keywords

I had a hard time grasping what you were saying, but let me know if I come close.

First, without doing actual keyword research you're going to be tossing money out the window anyway. If you're going to use PPC, you have absolutely, positively, 1000000% MUST do keyword research. Before you spend a penny you should know which keywords are going to bring in traffic, which ones are going to be duds, and which ones are going to bring visitors that are going to convert to customers. The key is not to pay for any old traffic, it's to pay for traffic that is going to bring in sales.

You're confused on what negative keywords and excluded ones actually are. Those are where you put the keywords you don't want to show up in. You wouldn't be charged for these. For example, let's say you're targeting "Boston, MA additions". You don't want to show up for "the worlds worst Boston, MA additions", or "Boston, MA Addition hacks", so you would put the words that you absolutely don't want to show up for in the negative keywords list.

Google breaks it down better than I can here:

http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=63235

Lastly, without an already optimized website you're just chucking cash at it, and it's probably not going to bring you the results you want. If you are getting tons of traffic but don't have a website that will convert them to sales, you're just paying for people to visit your site.

PPC (and SEO in general) is not something you can just wing. You really need to know what you're doing when you decide to implement it, or your going to be spending cash on something that isn't going to make you money.

Basic blueprint for PPC

Market research
Keyword research
Campaign set up
Campaign monitoring
Adapt and change based on results
Rinse and repeat

I joined this forum because of this post. Optimizing your Google PPC and ony of the other services "WILL" save you thousands of dollars.

My tip for the day.... use Google's keyword tool and search for your main keyword (or all of them for that matter).

Lets say you are a plumber

Search Google's tool for "plumber"...here are just a few of the results I found. From the list below I would add the following as negative keywords (jobs, employment, job, training, salary, union, wages, training, electrician) These are terms that are not relevant and will hurt your quality score as well as cost you more money.

There is a lot more to be said on the subject but if you just do this it will put you ahead of 90% of your competition.

Jim

plumbers

plumber jobs

plumber

plumber contractors

master plumbers

emergency plumber

emergency plumbers

find a plumber

master plumber

plumber repair

plumber service

24 hour plumber

plumber contractor

local plumber

plumber employment

plumber wanted

plumber job

plumber electrician

plumber wages

plumber training

plumber salary

plumber union

licensed plumber

plumber services

Not defending Google so much as I was trying to explain how it works for you so you stop wasting your money. And I think Google is doing just fine without having to pay me to provide a glowing review. I am a full time web developer, and in all honesty I think PPC should be a last resort to get traffic to a small business website - there are much better and much cheaper ways to handle it that actually make you money.

Back to the task at hand:

Google isn't "assigning" any keywords to you, you just haven't set up your negative keywords list. You decide what words you want to pay for, not Google.

If you've set it up for the keyword "addition", you're automatically going to show up for searches that contain the word.

Such as:

LA remodels and additions
Toronto addition builders
I need help doing addition

Since your keyword is so broad, you're going to show up for all different kinds of junk keywords. If you don't want to show up for terms like that, either use a more longtail keyword, or set up your negative list.

If you do some keyword research so you know what keywords to go after (I would suggest geo-targeting them so you're not getting people nationwide) and then set up your negative keyword list (so you don't show up for junk keywords) you'll be in a better position, and your money won't be going out the window.

If you just wing it, you're going to keep dumping cash without getting any results. It's not on Google, it's on the missue of AdWords.

Couple observations here...first we are talking about a couple of different types of marketing here. PPC and organic...there are many books out there on both (buyer beware)

First I want to touch on this:

I started this thread a couple of hours ago and it already ranks #9 on Google search for “Google Negative keywords” It got there organically thru links?

Click to expand...

Contractor talk has an alexa ranking of 36,623 (not shabby) it also 170K+ backlinks (again not shabby). I'm not going to analyze the site anymore but based on those two numbers google is going to give this site some ranking power.

By the Way, at the time of this writing 5:27pm cst if one does a phrase match search on Google you will notice that this thread is the #1 result out of 13,400 results. (that wont last...once the activity dies off the ranking will slip) (most of the time anyways)

without quotes its 6th out of 2,620,000. Not to shabby

So whats the problem with that search phrase? How many times does it actually get searched? If nobody uses it then there will be no traffic from it.

Three points I would like to make:

1) If I targeted this keyword for my marketing efforts could I make any money?

2) Check this same keyword in 24 and 36 hours to see if the rankings hold

3) Because of this forum's authority status from google it's a little easier to get content ranked by the search engines.

Enough of the organic traffic...as for this:

And yes SEO are all crooks, the reason is that there is no control, no rules of conduct, no limits, ETC.

Click to expand...

LOL Not all but most are

I WILL FIGURE OUT THE SEO GAME, and I will share it all as I figure it out, which is the reason for this post in the first place

Click to expand...

The question is....how much will you spend figuring it out...I have seen people spend 1000's

I'm not trying to discourage you David...as a matter of fact there is more than enough free information out there on the subject, you just have to find it.

Back to the Google PPC...Somewhere in my little bag of goodies I have this designation from Google saying that I'm an adwords expert (or something like that) I got it by spending quite a bit of money advertising on Google and taking their test.

The only reason I tell you that is so that at least you know I have spent my own money on Google adwords (and other peoples)

If you do not play your cards right with Google they will chew you up and spit you out. Google's PPC advertising system is designed to weed out the poorly performing advertisers. Google wants it's clients (the people searching) to find exactly what they want...that keeps people coming back and keeps Google on top.

What this means to the average person is this...If you run an ad on Google PPC and your click thru rate is half as good as the other guy you will pay twice as much for your click...this could get expensive. Now is always exactly like that? No....there are some other (minor) factors as well but basically thats how it works.

If I were building a page to collect leads for my product or service, I would build it so that I could track every single click. The reason for this is so that I could tell which keywords get me a lead and which ones dont. The ones that dont become negative keywords.

Thats the short version.....

If you are really interested ini PPC check out a fella named Perry Marshal...I think he has some pretty good free info