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Pay Per Click Advertising Yahoo! Search Marketing

 
Yahoo! Search Marketing

Yahoo! Search Marketing (YSM) was formerly named Overture. Click here for Yahoo! Search Marketing UK.

How Does Yahoo! Search Marketing Work?

Yahoo! Search Marketing is a large pay-per-click search provider. You write ads for your web site, and they appear in the search results and content sites with ads delivered by YSM. Before the end of 2006 most keywords were editorially reviewed prior to appearing in search results, but with the launch of their long awaited Panama platform most keywords are automatically approved and running within a couple minutes.

Yahoo! Search Marketing Stemming

Yahoo! Search Marketing also truncates search terms for ad targeting, so book and books are treated as though they are the same keyword phrase.
Yahoo! Search Marketing Advanced vs Standard Match

Yahoo! Search Marketing typically places standard match listings above advanced match listings if the advanced match listings are not as close of a match as the standard match. This means that if you bid on the exact term that someone is searching for you, will rank above ads that are matched via broader matching options
.
If you bid ten cents for best seo book and someone else bids 25 cents for seo books your best seo book ad will show above theirs if someone is searching for best seo book.

At the end of 2006 Yahoo! aimed to make their platform less transparent, so how they mix matching types may change over time.

Yahoo! Search Marketing Bid Prices versus Click Costs

With Yahoo! Search Marketing, you pick a maximum bid price and your bid will never exceed that. Their software has a bid discounter built in, so oftentimes your average bid cost may be less than your bid prices.

Prior to the end of 2006 Yahoo! Search Marketing bid prices were transparent, which meant you could usually see exactly what your competitors were bidding at any given time. With the launch of the Panama platform Yahoo! no longer shows exact bid prices but bid ranges, estimated clicks, and estimated share of clicks.

Please note that their estimates are just estimates, and that by adjusting your ad copy relevancy and appeal you can drastically alter your click costs and traffic volumes.

  • If you use appealing ad copy an ad at position number 2 or 3 may get more clicks than an ad at position number 1.
  • Relevant ads that get clicked often are given a higher quality score. Ads with a higher quality score are given a discount for their relevancy, since search engines make more when searchers click on more ads.

Bid Jamming

Once the new Panama system is live bid jamming may no longer be possible, but this explains how the process worked.
In some niche markets, there will only be a couple people who place exceptional value on ultra-qualified leads. For example, a Chicago DUI attorney may bid much higher for the term Chicago DUI attorney than a general nationwide firm would. If there are only a couple competitors in a market, it is not uncommon for the top few bids to be $5 or $10 while the rest of them are around 25 cents or less.

For example, if they bid $10, you can bid a max bid of $9.99. If the third placed person is only bidding 25 cents, your clicks will cost you 26 cents each while ensuring your competitor pays a full $10 per click.

Of course you want to monitor your accounts closely if you are using aggressive bidding techniques or bid jamming people. Some competitors will be stupid and let you take their lunch money. Others may be smart and readjust their bids to bid jam you. Some will go so far as click fraud, so you need to watch your account closely if you are bidding aggressively in competitive markets.

By default, ads are widely matched and syndicated to the content network, so if you bid high on the search network make sure you check the content network ads and bid lower on those. It doesn’t take too many $10 content clicks to come in to make for a bad day.

Yahoo! Search Marketing Programs:

Yahoo! Search Marketing offers a $10 bid bonus when you open an account, but has a $5 startup fee (which is converted to click credit), and it has no monthly minimum spend. They also have a FastTrack program where their account representatives will set up your account for a one time $199 fee. I recommend taking the time to set up your own account. You know your products better and are more interested in your own success than some random YSM editor is, they are more interesting in ensuring you spend as much as you are willing to.

Yahoo! Search Marketing offers a local product called Local Match, which allows you to target your ads from a .5 to 100 mile radius of your business location. The Local Match product requires that you have a business with a physical address, but it does not require a

website. These ads give driving directions to your place of business. Local Match ads show up in the same location where other Yahoo! Search Marketing ads appear.

Yahoo! Search Marketing also offers a paid inclusion program by the name of Search Submit Express (which I generally consider a waste of money for most websites). Search Submit Express gives your sites 48 hour refresh throughout the Yahoo! powered search products. SSE is a one time $49 review fee and also has an incremental cost per click. SSE is good for sites which:

  • are rapidly changing
  • or are having dynamic indexing problems
  • or need indexed quickly
  • or need the associated tracking offered by Search Submit Express

Free Yahoo! Search Marketing Tools:

Yahoo! offers a suite of tools to help their advertisers set up their accounts.

Yahoo! Search Marketing Search Term Suggestion Tool Errors:

Yahoo! Search Marketing truncates their search terms. While the plural and singular versions of search terms will greatly differ in search volume YSM just lumps them together.

Please note that the Yahoo! search term suggestion tool tends to run high on highly commercial terms since many automated bots and bid managers scour through their partner network. Here is an example keyword research search for S.E.O.

WordTracker tracks click data from the meta search engines by the name of Dogpile and WebCrawler. Since WordTracker makes their money by selling data versus clicks you can usually expect more legitimate traffic measurements using WordTracker. Digital Point created a free keyword suggestion tool which compares both traffic estimates.

KeywordDiscovery.com and GoodKeywords.com are two additional useful keyword research resources.

When doing pay per click advertising deep keyword research is a fundamental part of most successful campaigns. Many of the keyword research tools are top heavy (only showing the most common terms), but Yahoo! and Google both have enough traffic to give deep keyword research results.

WordTracker has a few cool features called lateral search and thesaurus which help you find similar keywords. I tested many of the keyword research tools and WordTracker is generally the only traditional keyword research tool I feel is worth paying an ongoing subscription for.

Another option to finding deep keyword data is to run a broad matched Google AdWords ad (AdWords and matching options are discussed later in this chapter) and mine keyword data from the referral strings. Make sure you watch your budget closely and use negative terms to filter unwanted traffic if you use this technique.

Ad Optimization, Tracking URLs, & Conversion Tracking:

Many pay per click providers offer services which at a glance seem as though they are valuable, but they may end up costing you to use them in the long run.

Something as simple as tracking URLs seems useful, but if you use the built in conversion tracking software you may be cause for your own ad prices increasing.

The internal Yahoo! ad optimization tool optimizes your ads for clickthrough rate (and thus Yahoo! ad relevancy and earnings). When you optimize for search engine earnings, that optimization may be at your own expense.

Ad Syndication & the Trusted Feed:

Many pay per click search engines syndicate their ads out to other search engines and contextual ad networks. Yahoo! has two syndication types, search and content match. Content match ads place your ads on content websites. Search ads place your ads on search sites, and sites which obtained a trusted feed from Yahoo!.

If you are in an expensive niche it is important to track your click sources and click quality because many search arbitrage players will target your keywords and your industry. You can’t opt out of trusted partner keyword feeds without opting out of Yahoo! Search, but in some cases that means you have to opt out of Yahoo! altogether if you are concerned about your ROI.

The Keys to Doing Well on Yahoo! Search Marketing:

Ensure you target your keywords properly and do not get in bidding wars. Do not bid high prices for exceptionally broad or generic phrases.

Your standard match listings will still compete against advanced match listings, but if you make a list of targeted phrases then you will not likely pay for as many untargeted clicks as a person bidding for more generic phrases. If you use somewhat generic phrases you will want to make sure you use negative words to block terms you are not interested in.

A few good examples of common negative terms to block are ‘cracks’ and ‘free’. People looking for free stuff are typically poor leads for most businesses.

Keyword tip: Spammed Out Guestbooks some guestbooks which have been spammed by aggressive competitors may help you find many keyword variations. Keyword tools may help you find about 500 keywords, but the guestbooks sometimes may yield over 5,000.

This free tool (web based) or this free tool (downloadable software) or this $50 tool (downloadable software) will help you create a ton of keywords based on different keyword groupings. Using that tool will allow you to quickly create hundreds or thousands of relevant exact match terms. This is the tool I use to make up my extended keyword lists after I have already done primary keyword research. Microsoft Excel also has a similar feature.

Some of YSM’s partners cut the ad text short so you will want to include your most important words near the beginning of the ad title and ad description.

YSM now factors click-through rate and keyword relevancy into click cost. A high click-through rate may lower click costs substantially, but make sure your ad copy and keyword selection still pre-qualify searchers. Write ads for conversions instead of just clicks. If you are trying to sell bulk stuff at wholesale, do not be afraid to use the word wholesale in the title AND place prices in the ad text.

PPC vs SEO in Small Paid Niches:

The more expensive the associated PPC ads are the more value there is in performing SEO on a site in a paid niche. If the average cost per click is $5 then a $1,000 SEO campaign pays for itself after only a few hundred targeted visitors.

YSM tends to be a bit sloppier than Google at monetizing niche advertisements. Google has a larger advertiser base and props up the ad costs using something they call quality based minimum bids.

If you are unsure whether an SEO campaign would justify its fees you can run a test PPC account to see what type of demand there is in your target market.

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