In the competitive world of B2B cybersecurity advertising, maximizing your return on ad spend is paramount. One of the most powerful tools for achieving this is the strategic use of negative keywords. These act as a filter, preventing your ads from appearing in irrelevant searches, thereby saving your budget for clicks that are likely to convert. By refining who sees your ads, you not only lower costs but also improve click-through rates and overall campaign performance. Mastering negative keywords ensures your budget is allocated effectively, focusing only on search terms that signal genuine interest from potential customers.
Negative keywords are specific words or phrases you add to your PPC campaigns to prevent your ads from being triggered by irrelevant search queries. Think of them as an 'anti-keyword' list; they tell platforms like Google Ads which searches you don't want to show up for. For example, if you sell enterprise cybersecurity software, you wouldn't want your ad to appear when someone searches for "free antivirus for home PC." In this case, "free" and "for home" would be excellent negative keywords.
Their importance cannot be overstated for several key reasons:
Ultimately, negative keywords give you greater control over your campaigns, ensuring that your message reaches the most qualified audience and maximizing your return on investment.
The primary and most effective tool for identifying irrelevant search terms is the Search Terms Report within your Google Ads account. This report shows the exact queries that users have typed into Google to trigger your ads, offering a direct window into what's working and what's wasting your budget.
Here is a systematic approach to analyzing this report:
Regularly performing this audit—weekly for new or high-spend campaigns, and bi-weekly or monthly for mature ones—is a fundamental practice for maintaining campaign health and stopping budget waste before it accumulates.
Building a comprehensive negative keyword list for the B2B cybersecurity industry requires a multi-layered approach that goes beyond generic terms. The goal is to filter out non-commercial and irrelevant traffic with precision.
Start by creating themed lists based on user intent. This makes management easier and ensures consistency across campaigns. Here are some essential themes for a cybersecurity business:
This is one of the largest categories. You want to exclude users who are learning, not buying.
Exclude searches that clearly indicate a need for a personal or home solution rather than an enterprise one.
Filter out existing customers or those looking for technical help rather than a new solution.
Create a dedicated list of competitor names. You can apply this to non-brand campaigns to ensure that budget is focused, while potentially using those same competitor terms in a dedicated "conquesting" campaign.
Finally, the most crucial source for your list is ongoing analysis of your Search Terms Report. This is where you'll find the unexpected and industry-specific irrelevant queries that no pre-made list can predict. Regularly mine this report for new terms to add to your themed lists.
The decision to add competitor brand names to your negative keyword list is strategic and depends entirely on your campaign goals and structure. There isn't a single "yes" or "no" answer, but here are the common scenarios and best practices:
For your primary campaigns that target unbranded keywords (e.g., "enterprise endpoint security"), it is a best practice to add a list of competitor names as negative keywords. This strategy, often called campaign sculpting, ensures that the budget for these campaigns is spent purely on users discovering solutions based on need, not by searching for a specific competitor. It prevents budget drain from searches where users have a strong pre-existing preference for another brand.
Many businesses run specific "conquesting" or "competitor" campaigns designed to target users searching for their rivals. In this case, you would bid on competitor names as your main keywords and absolutely would not add them to the negative list for that campaign. The goal here is to present your solution as a viable alternative at the exact moment a prospect is evaluating a competitor. This can be effective, but it's crucial to isolate this activity into its own campaign for proper budget control and performance measurement, as conversion rates can be lower.
The most sophisticated strategy is a hybrid one:
This approach provides the best of both worlds: it protects your general campaign budgets from being wasted on competitor-focused searches while still allowing you to strategically challenge rivals in a controlled and measurable environment.
Broad match keywords are a powerful tool for discovering new, relevant search queries and capturing a wider audience. However, their flexibility is also their biggest risk, as they can often match to irrelevant traffic and waste ad spend. The key to using broad match successfully is not to avoid it, but to control it with a robust negative keyword strategy.
Think of negative keywords as the essential guardrails for your broad match campaigns. Here’s how to manage them effectively:
By combining the reach of broad match with the precise control of an aggressively managed negative keyword list, you can discover new opportunities without letting your budget run wild.
Understanding the different negative keyword match types is crucial for effectively controlling which searches trigger your ads. Each type offers a different level of restriction. Unlike their positive counterparts, negative match types do not expand to include close variants, plurals, or synonyms, so you must be more explicit.
This is the default and most restrictive negative match type. Your ad will be blocked if the user's search query contains all the words from your negative keyword, regardless of the order.
cybersecurity solution, your ad will be blocked for searches like "enterprise cybersecurity solution" and "solution for cybersecurity," but it could still show for "cybersecurity software."This type blocks your ad when a search query contains your negative keyword phrase in the exact same order. Other words can appear before or after the phrase. This is often the most useful and commonly used negative match type for providing control without being overly restrictive.
"open source", your ad will be blocked for "free open source security tools" and "open source software," but it could still show for "source of open data."This is the least restrictive negative match type. Your ad will be blocked only when the user's search query is identical to your negative keyword, with no extra words.
[free trial], your ad will be blocked for the search "free trial," but it could still appear for "free trial for business" or "free software trial."In summary, broad match offers wide protection, exact match offers precise exclusion, and phrase match provides a functional balance between the two, making it a go-to choice for many campaign managers.
The ideal frequency for reviewing your search terms report and updating negative keywords depends on several factors, but a consistent cadence is crucial for maintaining campaign health and maximizing budget efficiency.
Here’s a general guideline based on campaign maturity and spend:
Regardless of the cadence, the process should be a core part of your ongoing PPC optimization routine. Neglecting this task allows irrelevant clicks to accumulate, which directly hurts your return on ad spend (ROAS). Setting a recurring calendar reminder can help ensure this critical task doesn't get overlooked.
Yes, absolutely. Creating and using shared negative keyword lists is a core feature in Google Ads and a highly recommended best practice for efficient campaign management. Instead of adding the same negative keywords to each campaign individually, you can create a centralized list and apply it to multiple campaigns with a single click.
This approach offers several significant advantages:
To create a shared list in Google Ads, you navigate to the "Tools and Settings" menu, and under "Shared Library," you will find "Negative keyword lists." From there, you can create new lists and then easily apply them to any number of campaigns in your account.
Excluding searches from job seekers, students, and researchers is one of the most critical steps in optimizing a B2B PPC campaign, as these groups often use commercial-sounding keywords for non-commercial purposes. The most effective way to do this is by building a comprehensive negative keyword list focused on their specific search intent.
You should create a shared negative keyword list and populate it with terms that signal academic or employment-related intent. Here are some essential keywords to include:
This group is looking for employment, not to purchase your services. Adding these terms as phrase match negatives is highly effective.
This audience is looking for information for papers, projects, or self-education, not a business solution.
In addition to negative keywords, you can use audience exclusions in Google Ads. For example, you can exclude audiences such as "In-market for Employment" and "Current College Students." This adds another layer of filtering to prevent your ads from reaching these demographics. Combining a robust negative keyword list with audience exclusions provides a powerful, two-pronged defense against this type of budget waste.
Distinguishing between B2C (Business-to-Consumer) and B2B (Business-to-Business) search intent is crucial for cybersecurity firms to avoid wasting ad spend on individual users who are not in the market for an enterprise-level solution. Certain modifiers in a search query are strong indicators of a consumer mindset.
By regularly reviewing your search terms report, you can identify and add these B2C-oriented terms to your negative keyword lists. Here are common categories and examples:
Consumer searches are often highly price-sensitive and focused on low-cost options, which is typically not the primary driver for enterprise buyers.
These terms explicitly state that the user is looking for a solution for personal use, not for a company.
B2B buyers look for robust, scalable platforms, while consumers may look for simpler, do-it-yourself tools.
Conversely, B2B search intent is often signaled by terms like "enterprise," "platform," "solution," "for business," "quote," "demo," and "pricing." By systematically excluding B2C search terms, you ensure your ads are shown to users whose language reflects a search for a comprehensive business solution, thereby improving lead quality and campaign ROI.
For most B2B cybersecurity companies selling premium, paid solutions, the answer is an emphatic yes. Excluding terms like "free," "open-source," and "cracked" is a fundamental and highly effective strategy for protecting your ad budget and improving lead quality.
Here's a breakdown of why each category is problematic:
By adding these terms—ideally as phrase match negatives (e.g., "free download", "open source")—to a universal negative keyword list applied across all campaigns, you create a powerful filter. This ensures you are focusing your advertising spend on prospects who have a genuine commercial intent and are looking for the kind of robust, supported solution your business provides.
