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When putting together a keyword list for a PPC campaign you probably use your favorite keyword research tool(s) and then either manually or with the aid of additional software, break out keywords into tightly-focused ad groups. These steps are vitally important in order to drive targeted traffic to your offer as well as for keeping your cost per click as low as possible.

One aspect of keyword research that a lot of marketers overlook or give scant attention to is compiling a comprehensive list of negative keywords for their PPC campaigns. However, a good list of negative keywords will go a long way towards filtering out unwanted traffic and as a result, lower you overall PPC spend.

For instance, if you’re driving traffic either directly to a merchant or to a landing page on your own site where the desired action is to convert the visitor into customer, then you don’t want to attract people in the “browsing” phase of a search.

Kewords you’d want to reject would be words such as “price”, “spec”, “reviews”, “comparison”, etc. These words may be fine if you’re driving traffic to a content site that contains product reviews or articles, but people searching with these words are typically not yet in buying mode.

Below is a list of some common negative words that are pretty universal to most campaigns:

forum
forums
mag
mags
magazines
magazine
download
downloads
dvd
dvds
video
videos
rent
rental
rentals
rating
ratings
review
reviews
service
customer service
support
explain
explained
pics
pictures
photo
photos
spec
specs
specifications
dimension
dimensions
size
capacity
repair

You would then extend this list with additional words that you wouldn’t want to have your ads shown for a specific topic. Adwords gives you the ability to set negative keywords either for an entire campaign and for individual adgroups or both.

So remember, whenever you begin to put together a PPC campaign, don’t forgot about those negative keywords!