Ad text pointers

[lprest]

I cannot stress often enough or overstate the critical importance of a huge negative keywords list.

I'm a newbie to PPC, have had an ad for us running since 1st of the year. Would you explain why you stress a huge negative keyword list rather than targeting the positive keywords more closely? Why just have "real estate" and then have negatives for other states, instead of having the state you want in positive?

[RonnieG]

I'm a newbie to PPC, have had an ad for us running since 1st of the year. Would you explain why you stress a huge negative keyword list rather than targeting the positive keywords more closely? Why just have "real estate" and then have negatives for other states, instead of having the state you want in positive?

Where did you get "rather than"? If you read some of my earlier posts in other threads in this PPC forum, you will see that I advise both: very community specific keywords terms, paired with community specific and keyword specific ads, PLUS a large campaign negative keywords list. I would never advise such broad and simple keywords as "real estate" or "homes for sale". Yes, you can get lots of impressions, but good CTR and accurate targeting will yield better quality leads at lower CPC.

As to having negatives for other states: Let's say you are running a geo-targeted campaign for a community in your area, targeted to consumers in your state only. Picking an example of my own: "littleton real estate", geo-targeted to Colorado only. I have ads in a nationally geo-targeted campaign that requires the consumer to enter that state name or code, but that is not a requirement in this regionally targeted campaign. Consumers with IPs in other states will not see the ads because of the geo-targeting. However, a consumer in my state may truly want to see real estate for sale in Littleton, MA, which really does exist. So their query is: "littleton real estate, MA". The MA negative keyword keeps my ad from showing, even though, as a phrase match (in quotes), it normally would be shown, regardless of extra words before and/or after the keyword phrase. Many of my local competitors are not so smart, so their ads do show, resulting in an extra impression that has no chance of being clicked, and lowering their CTR. My CTR is higher because my ads are shown only for appropriate consumer phrases. In addition, in my regionally targeted campaign, I also include my own state name and code in the negatives list, simply because I want my national campaign to get all impressions where the state name or code is entered, and I do not want my own national and regional campaigns competing against each other.