Bing Ads Negative Keywords Tutorial

Negative keywords are an important aspect of optimizing your Bing Ads search campaigns. You need to add them consistently in order to optimize your campaigns and improve your results. Since you are targeting keywords, you also want to exclude some as well. Just a quick note, Bing Ads and Microsoft Advertising are the same platform, but I still refer to it as Bing Ads.

You can watch our video below or view it directly on YouTube. The article below will go through the step-by-step process of adding Bing Ads Negative Keywords.

Bing Ads Negative Keywords Video Tutorial

What Are Negative Keywords?

Negative keywords are used to exclude certain words or phrases from a search campaign. They can be used in Google Ads or for Microsoft Advertising campaigns. Keeping up with your negative keyword list is a vital part of campaign optimization. When you add a word like “free” as a negative keyword, then any search query that includes the word “free” will not trigger your advertisement. It can be very helpful to exclude specific locations or specific words from your campaigns that won’t lead to a conversion. For example, a company that offers residential cleaning services in Dallas, Texas should add negative keywords for people who are searching for residential cleaning services in any other city or state.

We have an article dedicated to what negative keywords are here.

How to Add Bing Ads Negative Keywords

You will need a search campaign to get started. You don’t necessarily need to have any data yet, you can add keywords to your negative list as soon as you create your campaign. However, the search terms report is very helpful for finding negative keyword ideas as you gather more data.

1. Sign-in to your Microsoft Advertising account and open your search campaign.
2. Click on the ‘Keywords’ tab to see the keywords you are targeting.
3. Click on the ‘Negative Keywords’ tab or ‘Negative Keyword Lists’ tab.
4. Click on the ‘Add Negative Keywords’ button to start adding phrase match or exact match keywords.

Finding Your Negative Keywords

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Adding Negative Keywords

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How to Create Negative Keyword Lists

One popular option in Bing Ads and Google Ads is to create a negative keyword list that you can use for one campaign or multiple campaigns. In the video above, I go over exactly how to manage your lists and add them to a new campaign. Below, there are instructions and screenshots that will be helpful as well.

1. Sign-in to your Microsoft Advertising account.
2. Click on the ‘Tools’ link at the top and click the ‘Negative keyword lists’ link under the Shared library section.
3. From the Negative keyword lists page, click on the ‘Create’ button.
4. Name your negative keyword list and start adding negative phrase match and negative exact match keywords to control your keyword targeting in Bing Ads.
5. Click on an existing list to add new negative keywords to a list you have already applied to a campaign.
6. Click on the ‘Add campaigns’ button to apply the list to other campaigns in your account.

Find Your Lists on the Shared Library Page

Create a New List or View Existing Lists

Add Negative Keywords or Apply The List to Campaigns

Find Negative Keywords in Bing Ads Search Term Reports

One of the best ways to uncover additional negative keywords is by analyzing your Search Term Report. This report shows the actual search queries that triggered your ads.

Review the terms that led to low-quality clicks or irrelevant searches. For example, you may see searches for other geographic locations outside your service area. Or queries for free services when you don’t offer anything for free.

Add these irrelevant terms as exact or phrase match negatives. This will prevent your ad from showing for those searches in the future, saving you money.

Analyze the Search Term Report regularly to catch new unqualified queries as they appear. The data exposes the best negative keywords to add that you may not have thought of on your own.

Google Ads Negative Keywords

You can find our guide for adding negative keywords in Google Ads here. It is a similar process and you can actually even import your Google Ads negative keyword lists directly into Bing Ads when you import your campaign.

In Summary

Negative keywords are vital when it comes to optimizing your Pay-Per-Click Advertising campaigns. One of the first optimization lessons I learned when I was creating and managing campaigns was how to add negative keywords. Who and what you are targeting is important, and so is who and what you are excluding. Your conversion rate and cost per conversion can improve over time when you have a strong keyword strategy.