The poor performance of a keyword is a consequence of the influence of a number of factors. There are 2 ways you can address the poor performance of a keyword or any other entity in an ad account, like location, age, gender, time of the day, device, etc.

The first way is to remove a keyword or to reduce its bid. When specialists choose this way, soon, they end up with just a few to zero working keywords.

The second way is to keep the keywords yet just fix the causes of their poor performance. Here are the 3 main causes of the poor performance of a keyword:

1. non-optimal or irrelevant search queries,
2. non-optimal ad copy, and
3. non-optimal landing page.

To fix the poor performance caused by non-optimal or irrelevant queries, do the following:

• Ensure you’ve eliminated irrelevant clicks via negative keywords.
• Then, make sure intended queries trigger intended keywords that trigger intended ads. It’s not that easy as it sounds. Even some big brands have this issue at times.

And, to fix the poor performance caused by a non-optimal ad copy or landing page content, you have to run experiments.