Identifying your worst keywords is just as important as identifying your best. By knowing your worst keywords, you can eliminate them from your AdWords campaign and stop spending money on clicks that aren’t making you money. There are two metrics to check for the worst keyword, one to see how enticing the ad is, and the other that measures how well the sales are. This will show you the two metrics and exactly what you need to do.

Pre-Identification
When you setup an AdWords campaign, Google will instantly begin collecting information on how the keywords are doing, but it really isn’t a good idea to check the keywords just yet. If you take action within the first few hours, or even the first few days, you may have incomplete information that can lead you to rash decision.

Instead, let the keywords gather some history, let them be used on websites for a while so people can see the ads and decide to click on them or not. You should wait about a week before trying to discover your worst keywords.

Click-Through Rate (CTR)
The CTR is how often people click on the ad. A low CTR means your ad is gathering little attention, and thus very little traffic. For a successful AdWords campaign, you need a high CTR, otherwise your ads are just sitting there and not doing anything.

A low CTR shows that some improvements are needed in the ad’s keyword. For example, if the keyword is not specific for your ad, or if the keywords you used in your description are not used in the ad, this can lead to irrelevant ad displays. Relevancy is one of the most important aspects to getting good traffic, so you can improve your keywords by targeting them to your ad and market.

Bounce Rate
The bounce rate metric is used to measure keywords after someone has clicked the ad. Bounce rate means that someone came to your page, but they immediately left. This could be because the keyword is not specific or it is deceptive (such as selling cars even though your keyword is “toy cars”). High bounce rates may also show that your website has some problems, so take a good look at the design and copy, especially if all of your keywords are failing.

Make sure the keywords are specific and relevant, otherwise you are going to waste money when someone clicks your ad.

Checking AdWords Analytics
After the history, you just have to check your AdWords Analytics. If this is your first time using AdWords, it may be difficult to find this section. Starting by logging into your account. Find and click the “Traffic Sources” link and click your AdWords section.

Select the campaign, and all the keywords for the campaign will be displayed. From here, select the “Individual Keyword” drop-down box and choose either CTR or bounce rate. From here, just read the numbers and you will find your worst keywords. Change them or take them out, and you can really improve your sales and decrease your costs.

Ben is an online marketer and Google certified partner specialising in Google Adwords management for his diverse range of clients. He focuses on improving performance through campaign optimization and believes that simply increasing your bids for higher ad positions is not necessarily the best way to improve your results.