Let's take a look at some tactics for restricting your keyword list to exclude words not related to your products or services. Using our previous example, we want to make sure we're not bidding on phrases that don't apply to our business even though they contain the word "pens".

Notice that further into our Search Phrases report, we start to see visits to our site from keyword searches that have nothing to do with our products, such as "dog pens", "horse pens", "pens for animals", and "pen drive usb".

How did someone type "dog pens" into a search engine and end up on our site? We're definitely not bidding on that phrase.

Again it's the fault of our broad match "pens" keyword. Even so, why would someone click on our ad if they were looking for "dog pens"?

Take another look at our ad title and creative and you'll quickly see why:

1. First, try to use exact match with all of our keyword phrases by thoroughly researching our analytics. This will help us tailor more specific ads and prevent attracting and paying for the undesirable visitors.

2. Next, use our negative keywords by researching our analytics for any "tag-along" words that don't apply to our products or services.

The Bottom Line

Besides probably making you feel ill, using bad keywords is a terrible drain on your online budget. As we've demonstrated, your analytics are a great resource for fine-tuning your keywords list.

Remember, your analytics can do a lot more than simply measure visits and conversions. So, now that you know the cure to the dreaded Bad Keyword Allergy, be sure to use healthy doses of analytics, and see the health of your online marketing results prosper.