Startup Marketing Made Perfect With Ranky

Ever wondered how to optimize your display campaigns in a really easy and fast way? There are two main options when setting up a display campaign:

1. The most common type is a campaign in which you can pick specific placements, keywords, UTM metrics, etc.

2. Re-marketing campaigns that reach out to users who visited your website from websites that contain Adsense ads in them.

Now, you’re probably wondering: what is the big deal? Display ads are usually cheap. We get free branding if no one clicks, and if we do get irrelevant clicks, it’s not that bad. Is it?

Well, that’s one way to look at it, but don’t forget:

Clicks = Money - In the long run, you can clearly see how much money was spent, and you might be surprised to see how much money you’ve spent on clicks from unwanted websites.

More impressions from irrelevant clicks = Lower CTR = Higher CPC’s - From Google’s perspective, if your ads are showing and no one clicks on them, you should pay more money for the space you are occupying.

Adsense site owners are clicking on your ads - Even though Google is doing a good job with invalid clicks, “click farms” are clicking away, costing you money.

What if you create a Google display campaign and just add very specific sites? You’re still not there yet!
At the bottom of each display campaign creation page, we have a tick-the-box option:

If you leave that tick checked, Google will “automatically find placements in the Display Network that are around your current cost per customer (or Target CPA if you are using it). These placements may be different than the placements your campaign is currently using.”

We usually uncheck that little box since that’s a really good way to give Google more money.

Now, let’s optimize!

Once a week, you should head over to the “Display Network” > “Placements” tabs:

Use the little search box and enter the words you'll find further down the post to see how many impressions and clicks you got for these placements. Most importantly, check out how much money it cost you and if you ever got any conversions.
If this is the first time you are doing this, choose “all time” where you pick the time span you wish to view.

Disclaimer: Every Adwords account is different, and you might find some words that you will consider relevant to your account and your advertising goals.

Never start off with negative keywords in display ads (but always start off with negative placements setup). If that display keyword will appear only once on the page, your ads won’t show - this is an easy optimization trick that we have come up with here at Ranky, and we want to share with you.

Here are the words that you should search for to see where your ads are showing up.

Words that usually show up on sites for kids who accidentally (or not) click on them

• game
• arcade
• puzzle
• sudoku
• cross
• doll
• dragon
• play
• word
• fan
• kid
• pokemon
• trivia
• jugo
• juego
• club
• princess
• fun
• star

Sports/Music/Cooking (Ignore if your account relates to any of these subjects)

• sport
• soccer
• ball
• basket
• Song
• music
• food
• cook
• chef

Job-related keywords

• job
• work
• career
• employ
• resume
• salary
• salaries
• intern
• recruit

Education-related keywords

• tutorial
• training
• class
• school
• college
• university
• course
• occupation

Miscellaneous

• radio
• tv
• fm
• health
• diet
• test
• speed
• torrent
• model
• style
• video
• pics
• pictures
• photo
• super
• download
• money
• convert
• coin
• insurance
• weather
• info
• daily
• portal
• index
• news
• online
• cheap
• free
• blog

How Do I Add Negative Keywords to Google Ads?

You can either add individual or multiple negative keywords at once to your campaigns or ad groups.

How to add negative keywords to ad groups or campaigns?

1. Select "Keywords and Targeting" > Keywords, Negative.
2. Click "Add negative keyword" and select "Ad group negative keyword" or "Campaign negative keyword."
3. Select the destination for the new negative keyword and click OK.
4. Enter the negative keyword in the edit panel.

How to add multiple negative keywords to ad groups or campaigns?

First of all, it isn't possible to add campaign and ad group negative keywords at the same time with the make multiple changes tool. Choose to add either negative keywords or campaign negative keywords.

1. Select "Keywords and Targeting" > Keywords, Negative.
2. Click "Make multiple changes".
3. Select "My data includes columns for campaigns and/or ad groups" or "Use selected destinations".
4. If you select "Use selected destinations", select "Add as campaign-level negative keywords" or "Add as ad group-level negative keywords".
5. Type or paste your negative keywords in the grid.
6. Click "Process".
   The "Make multiple changes" tool will display the number of changes made.
7. Click "Finish" and review changes.
   Review your pending changes. To add the pending changes to your account, click "Keep". To undo your changes, click "Reject".

1. Copy the negative keywords.
2. Select multiple destination campaigns or ad groups in the data view by pressing Ctrl (Windows) or ⌘ (Mac) when clicking the campaign or ad group name.
3. Paste the keywords into your ad groups or campaigns.

What Is the Negative Aspect of Using Irrelevant Keywords?

Here’s a quick example of just one of these negative keywords - “game” 

458 clicks, 54,200 impressions, and $87 down the drain. What about the conversion? Well, it's spam.

And that’s just one keyword!

After going over this list, you will be probably as surprised as we were when we found out where our ads were showing up. You can now start going over your own unique placements - while keeping this in mind. You’ll surely find other keywords and placements that you can exclude from your Google display ads.

Use this list at your own risk as you might see CTR spikes, CPCs going down and conversion rates soar!