How to Use Negative Keywords in Your Pay Per Call Campaign

A lot of marketers focus on the right mixture of keywords and key phrases to help their digital advertisements and Pay Per Call marketing strategy achieve solid results in generating calls to the business. However, sometimes your keywords can leave you paying too much for the visibility your ads get, landing your ads in SERPs that don’t target your ideal audience. Negative keywords can help with that!

What are Negative Keywords?

According to Google, a negative keyword is a “type of keyword that prevents your ad from being triggered by a certain word or phrase.” Also known as a negative match, these keywords are used to ensure your ads aren’t shown to individuals searching for certain words or phrases that are only loosely similar and/or not related to your product, service, or industry.

Types of Negative Keywords

Your marketing strategy and Pay Per Call campaign have a budget, and using negative keywords can help you stay on budget by avoiding paying for clicks and click-to-calls that don’t generate high-quality leads. Negative keywords are used to help ensure your marketing campaign doesn’t target certain searches. When it comes to selecting types, you commonly have three options for search campaigns:

  • Broad

  • Exact

  • Phrase match

Using Broad Match

Broad match negative keywords won’t show your ads if searches contain all the negative keyword terms you select, regardless of the order they appear. Ads can still appear if the search contains some of your keyword terms. To use broad matches, you simply enter the words/phrases into your negative keyword list with no notations. If you don’t want to show up in every search that includes one broad keyword phrase, like “Miami landscaping,” you can hone in on specific searches by using Miami landscaping as a negative term.

Using Exact Match

Exact matches won’t show Pay Per Call ads only if the search contains the exact keyword terms, in the same order with no extra words. You can use exact matches by adding them to your marketing strategy keyword list with [brackets]. Exact terms can help you avoid being listed in particular areas or for types of services you offer. Let’s stick with our landscaping example above. If you don’t offer a particular type of landscaping service, such as tree trimming, you could use [Miami tree trimming] to avoid showing up for that search. Your ads will still show up though for other Miami landscaping service searches, such as “Miami mowing” or “Miami hedge trimming.”

Using Phrase Match

Phrase match negative keywords ensure your ads don’t appear in searches that contain the exact keywords in the same order. Ads may appear that have additional words, but won’t show as long as all the keyword terms are included in the search in the same order. You can setup phrase matches using “quotations” around your phrases.

Negative keywords, with one or various types, to help avoid wasted marketing spend on Pay Per Call ads that appear during irrelevant searches. Keep in mind that using too many combinations can limit the reach of your marketing strategy, and may still leave your ads appearing when close variations on search terms are used.

Read More: Boost Your Conversions With Long-Tail Keywords