First a confession. I lied. Every PPC campaign should NOT have all these negative keywords. Most should. Let me remind you why negative keywords are important, courtesy of Google:

“A negative keyword is a special kind of keyword matching option that allows you to prevent your ad from appearing when the specific terms are a part of the user’s search.”

Here at Get Found First we’ve added very specific negative keywords to our pay per clickclients accounts. For example, most of our dentists have terms such as “school”, “university” and “education”. Why? Because those terms often are searched with the word dental and our clients are not selling educational services.

What we are experimenting with now are much longer and thorough negative keyword lists. Our clients have many of these terms, but we have been adding more that are not already listed in their campaigns. We want to see how much performance will increase simply by adding these terms. Now if you are going to do the same remember a few things:

• Some of these terms should not be added to all campaigns. Free should be added to most, but not a client offering free 7 day trials.
• Traffic should decrease. Irrelevant traffic will decrease, but traffic will become more targeted.
• This list is not comprehensive and you should have many other negatives.

The keywords we are using for MOST campaigns:

General-

craigslist
directions
ebay
facebook
free
free sample
game
games
lyrics
map
maps
myspace
nude
porn
recipe
samples
sex
sexy
utube
you tube

Job Seekers-

opening
openings
career
careers
direct hire
direct placement
employer
employers
employment
freelance
freelancer
freelancers
freelancing
full-time
head hunter
hiring
independent contractors
intern
interns
internship
internships
job
jobs
part-time
position
positions
positions
recruiter
recruiters
recruiting
resume
resumes
salaries
salary
staffing
temp
temporary
interview
interviews
search
monster
human resources
opportunity
opportunities
government
staffing

Reference Keywords-

about
definition
diagram
example
examples
history
map
maps
sample
samples
what are
what is
article
articles
association
associations
blog
blogs
book
books
bulletin
bulletins
case studies
case study
data
define
forum
forums
guide
guides
image
images
info
information
journal
journals
learn about
magazine
magazines
meaning of
metrics
news
newsletter
newsletters
newspaper
newspapers
photo
photos
picture
pictures
report
reports
research
resource
resources
review
reviews
term
terms
terminology
theories
theory
tutorial
tutorials
FAQ
logo
logos
statistics
stats
success stories
success story

Research and Stats-

association
associations
book
books
case studies
case study
guide
guides
journal
journals
magazine
magazines
metrics
news
research
review
reviews
statistics
stats
success stories
success story
tutorial
tutorials
white paper
white papers
wikipedia
wiki
blog
blogs
blogger
news
press
article
articles

Education-

class
classes
college
colleges
conference
conferences
course
courses
education
institute
institutes
program
programs
school
schools
seminar
seminars
training
universities
university
workshop
workshops

We’ll stop there. If you want more ideas I compiled these from Solomon Rothman, Clix Marketing, and Andy Komack. Stay tuned next week as we look at the results from adding these lists to all of our clients!