150+ Negative Keywords for Software Selling AdWords Campaigns

Selling software over the Internet with Google AdWords has a lot of traps that we should learn to avoid as good as possible, so that our ads reach more targeted prospects every day. One of the trickiest aspects we should be in control of is the use of negative keywords, because they are the toughest candidate for wasting our money and for getting on the nerves of Google users, as it was eloquently explained by Linda Bustos on Get Elastic blog.

Negative keywords in your AdWords keyword list are those for which your ads will not show in search queries containing them.  You can get the general information about negative keywords directly from the AdWords blog.

When you’re trying to sell software through PPC campaigns, your goal is to obtain qualified leads to your software selling business, not to get as much and as untargeted traffic as possible. And that’s when negative keywords come in. Or out, actually:).

How do you know which negative keywords are right for your campaign?

Although it’s somewhat easy to describe what your software is and does and thus come up with keywords for your AdWords campaign, the semantic mix-up generated by users around the globe always has some surprises reserved for each of your campaigns.

No matter how hard you try to associate all possible negative keywords to your campaign, there will always be room for more. That’s because beyond what your software does not do and what names it does not have, search terms used on millions of computers accessing Google every day have as limit the sky itself.

That is why enriching the negative keyword list must be an on-going activity for every effective PPC campaign out there.

Depending on the type of software you are selling, some search terms used in Google simply are not good for business because they are not targeting the people who are interested in your solutions.  I really liked the post written by Alwin Hoogerdijk about negative keywords specific to the software industry and felt I can add to it.

That’s why in this blog post I have listed more than 150 negative keywords that I believe could be used in a software selling campaign (from our experience managing PPC campaigns for our clients and for ourselves, as well as from an inspiring article on b2b negative keywords from komarketingassociates.com).

Nevertheless, don’t take it for granted – consider them as a starting point, as they are not meant to be general guidelines for each and every piece of software out there.

Here goes the negative keyword list for selling software:

Please add your suggestions to this list!