MindValley Labs Internet Marketing Blog

The goal of every Google AdWords adver­tiser is to get win­ning results with Google AdWords. So, today, I am going to share one mis­take that I see almost all new Google AdWords adver­tis­ers make. If you make this mis­take, this is a sure fire way to guar­an­tee that you will not get win­ning results with Google AdWords.

What is the mistake?

Not using all of the key­word match­ing options intel­li­gently in Google AdWords. In other words, I see far too many adver­tis­ers that ini­tially buy ‘broad phrase’ key­words with­out hav­ing build a solid list of neg­a­tive key­words. The results of this will always be far worse than what they could be.

Why do so many new Google AdWords adver­tis­ers make this mistake?

There are pri­mar­ily two reasons

1. Not think­ing broad enough
2. A lack of under­stand­ing and experience

Every Google AdWords adver­tis­ers gets excited by the search vol­ume that they see for gen­eral key­word phrases. While it is true that this is where the bulk of the searches are there is a big prob­lem with using a ‘broad phrase’ match.

Let me give you a real world exam­ple of a busi­ness we just con­sulted in the real estate cat­e­gory. Our client runs a very suc­cess­ful com­pany that offers a lead­ing tool for real estate agents and one of the key­words the client was bid­ding on was ‘real estate.’ Our client was bid­ding on this key­word with­out hav­ing build a list of neg­a­tive keywords.

This is a sure way to get killed in Google AdWords and it will be impos­si­ble to get win­ning results with this system.

Why?

There are a mil­li­ion dif­fer­ent peo­ple that look for real estate on Google. Obvi­ously, our client only wants to reach his tar­get audi­ence (real estate agents). So, bid­ding on such a gen­eral key­word phrase, will mean that his ads gets served when lots of peo­ple that are not real estate agents type in “real estate” in Google.

Far worse, our client was not think­ing of all the other com­bi­na­tions of key­word phrases that con­tain the words ‘real estate’ that his com­pany has noth­ing to do with. For example:

- Real estate invest­ing
– Real estate taxes
– Real estate mort­gages
– Real estate con­struc­tion
– Real estate builders
– Real estate finance
– Real estate litigation

The list of neg­a­tive key­words goes on and on and on. By just includ­ing a broad match ‘real estate’ and NOT build­ing a very com­pre­hen­sive neg­a­tive key­word list, our clients ads would have sur­faced for tons of unre­lated searches on Google. Worse, our client was bid­ding up to $1.00 per click.

Bid­ding on broad key­word phrases such as ‘real estate’ can be a great way to get win­ning results with Google AdWords but only under one con­di­tion. The key­word phrase has to be rel­e­vant for your tar­get audi­ence and you have to build a bul­let proof neg­a­tive key­word list.

The fastest and best way to build both pos­i­tive and neg­a­tive key­word lists rapidly is Word­Tracker.

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About the Author

Prior to MindValley Media, Mike was the Head of New Ventures Strategy at eBay where he conceived of the strategies that led to the investment in Craigslist, the launch of Kijiji.com and the acquisition of Skype. Mike has an MBA from Stanford and previously worked for the Boston Consulting Group. He is also a certified Google AdWords Professional.

Check out other posts by Mike Reining

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