Negative Keywords for Dentists: Stop Paying for the Wrong Clicks
Google does not know you do not want clicks from people searching for free dentists, dental jobs or training unless you tell it. Here is how.
If you have ever opened your Google Ads account and wondered why you are paying for clicks from people looking for a free dentist, this is for you.
Google does not know you don't want to show for "free dentist" unless you tell it. The same goes for at-home whitening kits, dental salaries and dental assistant training. If you don't tell it, you lose a little money every day.
How matching really works
Most clinics think Google Ads works like this: I bid on "dental implants", so my ad only shows to people who want dental implants.
That is not how it works. Google matches you with related searches, and related can mean dental implant pain, dental implant training, dental implant jobs or dental implants in another country.
Google's job is to show your ad as often as possible. Your job is to stop it showing to the wrong people.
What negative keywords are
A negative keyword tells Google: if a search includes this word, do not show my ad. They are not about getting more traffic. They are about blocking bad traffic, and for dental clinics that is where much of the money is saved.
Say you bid on "Invisalign near me" and someone searches "Invisalign dentist salary". Without "salary" as a negative, your ad shows, you pay for the click, and that person was never going to book. Now imagine that happening 20 times a week.
Positive keywords are the people you want. Negative keywords are the people you refuse.
What dental clinics should block
Depending on your practice, you will almost always want to block:
- jobs
- salary
- training
- school
- free
- DIY
Some practices will also want to block insurance-related and question-style searches. You are not hiring and you are not teaching students. You are trying to book patients.
If you have ever said "Google Ads doesn't work for my practice", there is a good chance your ads were fine and you were paying for the wrong people.
How to add them
To one campaign: select the campaign, go to Keywords, open the Negative keywords tab, click the plus icon, type your words and save.
To every campaign, the cleaner way: use a negative keyword list. Go to Tools, then Shared library, then Exclusion lists. Click the plus icon, name the list, paste in your negative keywords and save.
A new list is not attached to anything, so there is one more step. Tick the list, click Apply to campaigns and choose the campaigns.
From then on you maintain one list, and every update rolls out to all the campaigns it is applied to.
If you want me to look at your account and tell you what I would fix first, book a strategy call.