What Are Negative Keywords?
Negative keywords are specific terms that can be used to exclude irrelevant search terms from triggering your ads to appear on Google. The benefit of this is that your ad campaign would overall have a higher ROI because there will be less of the wrong individuals clicking on your ads, therefore increasing wasteful ad spend. For electrical contractors, this can be useful in ensuring that your ad campaigns are only being shown to potential customers whose search intent is to find an electrical contractor for commercial or transactional search intent.
Negative keywords can be used like normal keywords in terms of match type. In other words, you will be able to fine tune whether you want to exclude exact match keywords, phrase match, or broad match from triggering your google ads from appearing in searches.
Examples Of Negative Keywords For Electrical Contractors
Examples of negative keywords for the three different match types for the Google Ads platform would look a bit different for each one. In the context of negative keywords for electrical contractors, some examples would like the following:
For exact match negative keywords, if a user’s search exactly matches the negative keyword you added, it will not display your ad. For example, if you include “plumbing” as a negative keyword, then searches containing that exact term would not trigger your ad to be displayed.
Phrase matched negative keywords are different because you can exclude keywords from appearing within a certain order. As an example, if you wanted to exclude specific phrases from triggering your ads, like free consultations, you would include that as a negative keyword for phrase matching in the Google Ads platform campaign settings. However, it is worth noting that the phrase you are trying to exclude can still trigger your ads if they are written in a different order of appearance within the search query, so adding multiple iterations of a negative keyword with phrased matching can help ensure this does not happen, or you can use broad match type negative keywords.
Broad match type negative keywords will ensure that if a search contains the keyword you are trying to exclude, no matter else the search contains in any order, then your ad will not be triggered. For example, if you include “HVAC” as a negative keyword broad match type, your ad will not be triggered in any search with “HVAC.”
Summary
It is absolutely worth using negative keywords in your ad campaigns. Not only will you filter out more people with little to no transactional intent, but you will see a much higher ROI on leads that are converting because you are narrowing your target audience to the individuals who will need your services the most. Specifically, for electrical contractors, using negative keywords in your ad campaigns will noticeably make a change in conversion KPIs.