Amazon negative keyword usage guide: the key to optimizing advertising costs and increasing conversion rates

Using negative keywords is an important strategy for Amazon sellers to improve advertising efficiency. It helps sellers save advertising expenses, ensure the relevance of advertising display, and improve return on investment. This article will provide a detailed analysis of the concept, operation techniques and implementation suggestions of negative keywords, in order to help sellers manage their advertising expenditures more effectively.

The definition and importance of negative keywords

Negative keywords are keywords that sellers want to prevent their ads from appearing in specific search results. Once you set negative keywords, Amazon will no longer display your products in the ad positions corresponding to these keywords. This means that sellers can avoid wasting their advertising budget on keywords that are irrelevant to their products or have low click-through rates, thereby improving the overall effectiveness of their advertising. By setting negative keywords appropriately, sellers can effectively optimize their advertising strategies, reduce advertising costs, and ultimately increase conversion rates.

Types of negative keywords

In Amazon, there are two main matching modes for negative keywords:

• Negative Phrase: Ads will not be shown when consumers search for keywords that contain negative phrases. For example, if “Round neck” is set as a negative keyword, the product will not be displayed when customers search for related words containing “Round neck”.
• Negative Exact: Your ad will only show if the search query exactly matches the negative keyword. For example, if “Round neck” is set as a precise negative keyword, the product will be blocked only when searching for “Round neck”, but the search for “Round neck T-shirt” will not be affected.

For new products, you need to be particularly careful when using negative keywords to avoid affecting Amazon’s inclusion and identification process of the product. Therefore, sellers should focus on the relevance of consumer search terms and should not rely solely on data indicators to make judgments.

Selection criteria for negative keywords

Selecting appropriate negative keywords depends on the data accumulated after the ad is launched, which usually includes the following aspects:

1. Keywords with high exposure but low conversion rate.
2. Words with low click-through rates and low conversion rates.
3. Search terms unrelated to the product.

Regularly checking and updating negative keywords is an important task to maintain advertising effectiveness. It is recommended to monitor advertising performance on a weekly basis and eliminate invalid keywords in a timely manner.

Management strategies for negative keywords

To ensure the effectiveness of advertising investments, sellers can adopt the following strategies when managing negative keywords:

• Regularly analyze advertising data: Based on the 7-day advertising performance cycle, regularly download advertising reports, analyze which keywords have failed to convert effectively, and add them as negative keywords in a timely manner.
• Choose a stricter matching mode: Where possible, prioritize Negative Exact to reduce potential loss of effective traffic.
• Consider ad attribution period: Understanding the attribution period of your ad (usually 7 days) is important for optimizing the timing of negative keywords. If a consumer completes a purchase within a few days of clicking on an ad, the order will also be considered an ad effect, which requires sellers to consider the time factor when analyzing data.

Through the above strategies, sellers can continuously improve the relevance of advertisements, while reducing the frequency of invalid displays and ensuring the effective use of advertising budgets.

Conclusion

The precise use of negative keywords is an important part of managing ad spend for Amazon sellers. By rationally selecting and regularly updating negative keywords, sellers can not only optimize advertising performance, but also achieve a good balance between cost control and improved conversion rates.