If you’re like most Internet advertisers, you put a lot of thought into your keyword list, but what about your negative keyword list?

Negative keywords are essential to an effective keyword list. Including negative keywords in your ad group means that your ads won’t appear for search queries with those words.

After all, why waste your ad budget on unqualified traffic?

Filtering out these undesirable impressions let you reach the most relevant prospective customers, therefore reducing your cost-per-click (CPC), and increasing your ROI.

To add negative keywords, just put a minus sign (-) before each word or phrase.

How to find negative keywords for your list

1. Put your positive keyword in a Google search. Then study the search results for words that don’t apply to your product or service. For example, if you sell computers and use the word ‘computer’, you may see results for ‘computer classes’. You would make ‘classes’ a negative keyword.

2. Visit the competition’s sites. If you only sell desktop computers and your competitor sells laptop computers, make ‘laptop’ a negative keyword.

3. Make use of the Google Keyword Tool. Check the ‘use synonyms’ box. Turn any of those words that don’t apply into negative keywords.

One example of a negative keyword list.

Sometimes thinking negatively can have positive results!

credits:
adwords.google.com
clixmarketing.com
engineready.com

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Bjornenki.com’s free preview tool lets you see what any changes you make to your blog’s meta description will actually look like on Google (without having to wait days for Google to index it)

Thanks to blaineblogger.com’s informative post: How to preview your Google search engine listing before it’s listed

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Google has recently launched Site Performance, an experimental feature in Webmaster Tools that gives you data about your website’s speed and makes suggestions on how to make it faster.

Research shows that speeding up your website can result in increased user retention and activity, higher revenue and lower costs.

On Site Performance, you’ll find how fast your pages load, how they have done over time, how your site’s load time compares to other sites, examples of specific pages and their load times, and Page Speed suggestions that can help reduce user-perceived latency.

Read more about Google Site Performance here.

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Ever wonder how much of your home page or landing page that visitors will see when they come to your site? Are key buttons such as ‘order now’ appearing above the fold?

Well, now Google Browser Size helps answer these questions.

It is a visualization of browser window sizes for people who visit Google. For instance, “90%” contour means that 90% of people visiting Google have their browser window open to at least this size or larger.

This is useful for making sure that important parts of your page’s user interface are visible by a wide audience.

On the sample page you see when you visit this site, there is a “donate now” button which falls within the 80% contour, meaning that 20% of users cannot see this button when they first visit the page.

20% is a significant number; knowing this fact would encourage you to move the button higher on the page so it can be seen without scrolling.

Try it out. Enter your website URL at Google Browser Size and see how your website will appear in multiple browser window sizes.

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Google Hot Trends gives you an instant snapshot of the hottest 40 terms people are entering into their Google search box.

It’s valuable information for people who monitor trends and public sentiment. It can be very useful for marketers to see what consumers are interested in and for Internet marketers researching potential keywords and market niches.

For example, at the moment this post was written (November 29, 2009), the Tiger Woods accident and alleged marital spat took three of the top ten spots.

At number three was Rachel Uchitel Pictures. (Rachel Uchitel is the alleged mistress reported by several tabloids.) At number six was Tiger Woods Mistress.

And at number seven was Tiger Woods Affair Rachel Uchitel. (Number one, by the way, was Cryptic Clue Fest Day 4 – whatever that is).

Anyway, the list changes constantly, just as public sentiment and interests do. In fact, by the time I posted this article, the top 10 changed again.

You can see this moment’s Google Hot Trends here.

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This move makes WordStream the first keyword tool provider to integrate their software with Google Analytics to help search marketers.

Another new tool, multi-source keyword analytics, gives marketers the ability to analyze data from organic search, paid search, and estimated totals from keyword suggestion tools side-by-side.

In addition to Analytics API integration and multi-source keyword analytics, WordStream’s latest product release features more enhancements such as:

• Improved machine learning and keyword segmentation algorithms

• Integration with WordStream’s popular Free Keyword Tool

WordStream makes their software available for use in a two-week free trial, after which users can elect to subscribe to one of several fixed-price monthly service offerings.

You can watch a video on the new WordStream features.

You can read the full WordStream press release here.

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Getting banned by Google AdSense is often irreversible. So avoid these pitfalls and be sure to follow up on any warnings you receive via email from the Google AdSense staff.

Bannable offenses include:

• Suspicious clicks – clicking on your own AdSense ads or getting others to click for you
• Showing off your AdSense earnings
• Stealing content
• Taking part in link exchanges or ranking exchanges
• Having more than one AdSense account
• Showing porn
• Misusing the appearance or placement of your AdSense ads
• Not having a privacy policy with a cookie disclosure

See many more details on Google AdSense bans in the article via HubPages.

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That apparently is the viewpoint of techradar.com. In their article, “8 bits of everyday tech we won’t use in a decade,” blogging came in as number eight.

An excerpt:

In ten years, the web will become much more interactive, as proven by services such as Qik.com (where you can stream live photos and video) and Google Wave, which allows you to see what someone is typing. Also, crowdsourcing will replace the pundits (ahem) and lead to better overall information sharing.

See the full article, including the other seven soon-to-be-obsolete tech items here

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Now when you do a search in Google, you’ll see a Show Options link on the top bar. Just click on that link and you’ll see the menu of options. Use these to better refine your results.

New options include:
• past hour
• specific date range
• more shopping sites
• fewer shopping sites
• visited pages
• not yet visited
• books
• blogs

These are in addition to previously released options such as videos, forums and reviews.

Read more and see a video tutorial on the Official Google Blog

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Google now makes it easier to switch!

Google announced yesterday that Gmail now migrates email and contacts from other email providers, including Yahoo!, Hotmail, AOL and others.

Give it a 30-day test run.

Gmail also gives you the option to forward your email messages for up to 30 days while you test it out. To set up, click on your Gmail settings, then click on “Accounts and Import.” While this feature is available for all new Gmail accounts, it is still being rolled out on existing accounts so watch for it. Schools and businesses using Google Apps will not have these new migration options.

I use Gmail for my personal email.

I like it a lot. Google’s search capabilities come in handy, letting me search my archive of emails for key words. And their Google Labs has great options like Forgotten Attachment Reminder (who hasn’t sent an email and forgotten to attach the attachment!)

Try Gmail. You’ll like it.

mail.google.com

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