What are Negative Keywords in Amazon PPC Explained
Negative keywords refer to words or phrases that are used to block Amazon ads. Putting a negative keywords list while running ads will not display your ads for those keywords on Amazon search pages.
To understand this, we will take an example. Suppose you run an ad for a product, “steel spatula”. What if Amazon runs your ad on the keyword “Wooden spatula”? This will waste the campaign performance.
It is better to put the word “wooden” in the negative keywords; this will prevent your ad from appearing on that keyword. This way, you can avoid unwanted clicks that will not give you conversions.
Why Add Negative Terms in the Amazon PPC Campaign?
Relevancy
The ultimate goal of creating an Amazon PPC campaign is to reach the right audience. Putting negative terms in the campaign will protect your ad from wrong keywords and phrases placements on search pages.
Profitable
When you assign the set of negative phrases and words, you ensure potential targeting. Promoting your product to the right customer will help you get more customer conversions.
You can save money from unwanted clicks and get targeted clicks from customers who are interested in your product.
High CTR and CVR
If your ad appears on the Amazon search page for the right keywords, customers are more likely to click on it. This is because they are seeing exactly what they are looking for.
This will help you maintain a good CTR (click-through rate). Landing of potential customers on the product detail pages, boosts the chances of conversions. So, you may expect a good CVR (conversion rate).
Difference Between Regular and Negative Keywords
Regular keywords are the words that are relevant to your product. They are also known as “positive keywords or phrases”. On the other hand, negative keywords are a group of keywords or phrases that are irrelevant to your product.
For example,
You sell a used and throw or recycle utensils set of spoon, fork, and plates. So, positive words for your products are disposable utensils set, disposable fork and spoons etc.
But, running ad on utensils set, steel utensil set won’t work for you. It is because your product material and customer query are not matching. So, better to keep steel, metal etc keywords in the negative section.
The positive keyword has three match types: Exact, Broad, and Phrase match. Whereas Negative keywords have two match types: phrase and exact.
Negative phrase match
A negative phrase match keyword targeting helps you protect ads from displaying on searched keywords that include the negative phrase.
E.g., you made “steel utensils set” negative as a phrase match. Your ad will not be visible on the search terms having steel utensils.
Possible queries where ads won’t display:
Steel Utensils set for parties, steel utensils sets for home, 100 steel utensils set, etc.
Possible queries where ads will display:
Utensil sets for parties, steel utensils for home, etc.
Negative exact match
Keeping the term or keyword negative exact match will not display ads on the exact term, singular and plural, their misspellings, and synonyms.
E.g., you kept the keyword “steel utensils set” as a negative exact match.
Possible queries where ads won’t display:
Steel Utensils set, steel utensil set, steel utensil set.
Possible queries where ads will display:
120 steel utensils set, steel utensils set for home, etc.
How to Effectively Use the Negative Keywords?
As we saw, the probabilities of both negative match keyword types are. There are possibilities that your ads can appear on negative terms.
So, instead, keep a key term single word, as a negative phrase match word to get the best from negative keyword targeting.
For e.g., if you keep “steel” as a negative phrase keyword, your ad will not appear on any search term having steel inside. As you are selling a wooden disposable utensil kit, metal and steel both do not fall under your targeting zone.
Cons of not using negative keywords in the campaign
Unwanted spend
Many sellers who run automatic target campaigns or broad campaigns often get unwanted clicks from irrelevant keywords.
All the clicks from unwanted or irrelevant keywords never turn into sales. So, when you run an auto ad or broad match campaign, closely monitor the campaign keywords. Pause the unwanted keywords and transfer those in the negative keyword zone.
Think of if your wasted money could be invested in the potential customers, it could have increased the conversions.
Low product rankings
Running ads on unwanted keywords will not just incur expenses. But also, your product visibility gets affected on Amazon.
Amazon keeps CTR, CVR, ROAS, and ACOS, etc metrics as a key to rank products whether sponsored or organic.
Without negative keywords, your ad is prone to display on unprofitable and unwanted keywords. This may lead to poor CTR and CVR. Your rankings may fall.
How to Find Negative Keywords for Your Product?
To find negative keywords for your product, you can simply think of your product based on the following things.
Check for your product color, material, size, quantity, capacity etc based on the attributes. This way you can highlight and trigger negative keywords.
Another way of finding negative keywords is to look inside the campaign. You will find a set of keywords where your ads appeared. Read the terms and check whether it is relevant to the product or not.
The third thing is to use a third-party tool like Karooya. They will do an internal audit of your product and keyword list. It helps you identify negative keywords.
