How To Avoid Consumer Search Terms When Targeting B2B Keywords?

Today’s question comes from Brad and he called in a question. It’s very specific, but the answer is really going to apply to a lot of situations. Here it is. 

Hi, this is Brad, and thank you very much for your podcast. And my question is about keywords. Okay, so I’m doing advertising for veterinary X-ray machines to sell to vets, and also veterinary ultrasound to sell to vets. So this is business to business. It is not for consumers. 

So in search terms, I get search terms that say just veterinary ultrasound or vets who do X-ray, or veterinary X-ray, which could be a vet, but it’s probably a consumer looking for a vet that does X-ray or ultrasound. So is there a way to try to eliminate those?

A lot of my keywords are veterinary dental machine or veterinary ultrasound machines or veterinary dental systems. So I tried to have a three-word keyword, but I get a lot of two-word searches. And I think the two-word searches are more consumers. So I’m just trying to cut costs on that. 

Do you have any suggestions on keywords for that situation? Thank you very much for your podcast, and all your information. 

Thank you, Brad.

Yes, I think you’re completely right that those shorter search terms are more consumer-based. Someone’s searching for veterinarian x-rays is probably not a veterinarian looking for a machine. 

So let me talk about how you’ll be able to cut out those search terms. I’ll also talk a little bit about some additional keywords you might want to consider with a campaign like that. 

So let’s look at the situation:

• You’re targeting the keyword veterinarian ultrasound machine.
• Google is sending you traffic for people typing-in veterinarian ultrasound. 

My guess is even if you’re targeting with exact or phrase match keywords, they might still be sending you traffic from those shorter search terms. So, simply adding your keywords as exact match isn’t necessarily going to solve the problem. 

You do need to solve it by adding negative keywords.

And what you would do in that example is, you would add veterinarian ultrasound as an exact match negative keyword. So that’s going to prevent that specific search term from triggering your ad. But it will not block the longer versions of it. 

So, it is not going to block “veterinarian ultrasound machine”, it’s only going to block the exact match, veterinarian ultrasound. So you’ll want to go through, look for all those shorter phrases that you’re saying are more consumer phrases and put those in your negative keywords as exact match negative keywords. 

There are some other keyword ideas I had just to throw in for you.

There’s probably a lot of specific machines, specific models of machine that you could be targeting with this. Now, I don’t know if your client sells a specific machine or if they are selling a variety of machines. But this is something where a veterinarian might be looking at. 

Maybe they’re researching on a different website, they find a specific machine that they want to buy. And now they’re typing in that specific machine (the brand, the model number). Maybe they saw it in a trade journal for vets. And now they’re going to do more research on that specific machine. So targeting those specific machines, especially if they are ones that your client sells, those are some more keywords that you can take advantage of. 

You can also use keywords like ultrasound machines for vets, ultrasound machines for veterinarians.  If you’re including the phrase “for vets” or “for veterinarians”, consumers aren’t going to be searching for those types of keywords. That’s only something that a veterinarian would search for. 

Maybe you’re already targeting those types of keywords. But just think of more ways like that, that a veterinarian would be searching for these machines. And again, just add a lot of exact match negative keywords to block out those shorter consumer-type searches. 

I think it’s a pretty straightforward answer. Thanks again, Brad, for calling in with that question. 

P.S. If you want to call in a question, I encourage you to do so.

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