If you are managing your ad words account yourself be aware of what a negative key word is, these can be very costly, and if you’re running a business that offers no conversion tracking you may have many without knowing it. Let me give you an example and explanation of a negative key word. At present I am building an ad words campaign for a security company, one of their many services includes security for windows. Now at first glance this looks like an inoffensive super key word, and certainly a key word we should use in our campaign. Trust me this key word has a sting in its tail. Before reading take a few minutes to think about what makes this key word so dangerous remembering it’s a keyword for a security company.

Ok, your times up, if you have not worked out why this keyword could be costly if managed badly, don’t beat yourself up about it. Just remember you will have many of them, if you have not already identified and dealt with them, please do so know.

The answer for why security for windows is a negative key word is simply its too generic; it can be a key word for more than one business. If I wanted to download security files for my computer which runs Microsoft Windows, I may type in security for windows, not wanting security for my home windows. So to make this key word less offensive I would delete it as a key word or Make it an exact match, changing it to security for home windows. (Please click on keyword types for more information)