Amazon Seller Must-Knows about Negative Keywords

Amazon defines negative keywords as those that can exclude poorly performing searches, thereby reducing advertising costs and improving return on investment (ROI). Sellers can use negative keywords to target their ads to the main target buyers. For example, if a seller sells silver jewelry, they can add the negative keyword "plated silver" to the ad group where silver necklace ads are placed. As a result, the seller's ads will only appear on the search results page for silver necklaces, rather than on the search results page for plated silver necklaces. Negative keywords play a significant role and can be implemented in two main ways.

1.Proactive Approach

When using broad match, sellers can exclude keywords that are irrelevant to the product to eliminate some junk traffic. For example, if selling iPhone7 cases using broad match, but the style of the phone case is business-oriented, buyers may encounter a seller when searching for "Cute iPhone7 Cases", clicking on the ad but not generating any orders. At this point, the seller can choose negative keywords, select "Cute" as the negative keyword, and select phrase match. After negation, any keyword containing "Cute" will not appear, effectively removing this attribute. This is proactive negation, which tests the seller's keyword skills.

2.Passive Approach

Sellers first run automatic ads to test data, wait until the ACoS reaches 100%, and spend a lot of advertising costs before negating some words. Sellers can negate some words by analyzing reports, such as keywords with high click-through rates but no conversion into orders, or keywords completely unrelated to the product. Many discussions about how to reduce ACoS actually involve a continuous process of negating keywords. Keywords with high click-through rates but low conversion will reduce listing weight. Sellers can directly negate them and then proactively negate some unrelated keywords. Therefore, when using broad match, if sellers want to make traffic more accurate, they can adopt the structure of "broad match plus negative keywords" to reduce junk traffic.

Negative keywords must be used with caution, and precise negation should be chosen whenever possible. Especially for relevant keywords, if a related keyword is mistakenly chosen for phrase match negation, it may block most of the traffic for the listing and reduce the sales of the listing. For example, if a seller sells Hard Drives, a product without Wii functionality, but the keyword "Wii Hard Drive" appears in automatic ads and generates many clicks but no conversions, the seller can choose to precisely negate the term "Wii Hard Drive". Why not phrase match negation? Because not excluding other phrases containing this term may attract traffic. For example, if a consumer searches for "White wifi Hard Drive", this term brings in very good conversions. However, if "Wifi Hard Drive" is negated, the term "White wifi Hard Drive" will not bring in traffic for the seller. Therefore, for any type of keyword, sellers should adhere to the principle of giving every opportunity unless they are very certain that the keyword cannot bring in traffic based on the data in the advertising report. Otherwise, precise negation should be used whenever possible.