All posts in yahoo search marketing

This is a guest post from Kelvin Newman at Site Visibility.

I’m starting to feel a bit sorry for Yahoo, not only are they seen by most people as a bit of a joke, largely the stick is unwarranted. They’ve got some great little products and services, two of which I use to this great little way of keeping tracking of easy social media interaction opportunities.

The main service is Yahoo Answers, its a hugely popular social site where users ask and answer questions. If you’ve not checked Yahoo Answers recently, go over now and have a look, there will be dozens of people asking questions related to your industry – no matter how obscure or niche it is.

The nightmare though is having to revisit the site everyday to see whether there’s anything new or relevant. Fortunately the main categories have RSS feeds so you could set up the feed in your RSS reader to keep track of the mentions in your chosen category, but your a busy digital marketer, you don’t have time to check through every question asked on the site. That’s where Yahoo Pipes comes in.

Last week, the UK media was full of Lord Carter’s interim report Digital Britain – the result of an enquiry into how best the country can boost its digital and communications sectors.

The report is lengthy and covers a wide variety of topics, from the development of broadband and its required infrastructure, to digital radio and public service broadcasting.

But what were the most relevant facts for the search engine optimisation (SEO) and general online marketing sectors? What should we industry professionals glean from the paper? Here are my thoughts on what the most interesting elements of the report are for the world of web-based

Britons have upped the amount they spend online, according to a new report compiled by the Interactive Media in Retail Group (IMRG) and Capgemini.

Again.

Every time they publish a report, the news is the same, online spending rises every month as Britons gradually shift their shopping onto the web. I should just publish the same story and update the numbers each time!

The IMRG/Capgemini e-Retail Sales Index August 2008 revealed spending rose to £4.8 billion (£79 per person) in July. The month before that it, the organisation discovered growth of just 24 per cent to £4.3 billion. I say ‘just’ because in May, online retail growth was more than 30 per cent.

What really interested me this month, though, was a comment made by Mike Petevinos, Head of Consulting for Retail at Capgemini UK. He explained growth is rapid, even within the current gloomy economic climate. One reason he gave was “the increased choice, price transparency and convenience that online has to offer”.

It is this choice, ease and transparency which have made the web such a successful place to operate from. However, it doesn’t matter how many consumers are using the internet to shop – if a company cannot be found then it cannot compete. Visibility is hugely important.

Yahoo! has urged marketers to choose appropriate keywords for their paid search campaigns.

A post in the engine’s search marketing blog reiterates the message we tell clients day after day – choose business specific keywords.

It suggests firms bid on both generic and specific phrases, warning generic selections can quickly eat up budgets and are less likely to result in sales than more targeted choices.

This is such an important point for search engine marketing and for natural search tactics.

Yahoo!’s example is the broad word “guitar”. Now, a consumer plugging that word into a search engine could be looking for lessons, wanting to buy a guitar or seeking sheet music.

Businesses choosing to bid on that word had better have a pretty broad range of guitar-related services, or they risk wasting their marketing pennies.

So, in terms of paid search, it makes sense to target keywords which are highly specific.

However, often it is tempting to pursue generic and highly-competitive keywords through the organic results.

If a company decides its wants to aim for high rankings in the most-competitive phrases, it is important to make use of some less generic phrases at the same time.

This allows them to rank highly for business-specific keywords while they battle to climb the rankings of those more difficult phrases.

Nathania Johnson posted some very interesting stats on SEW yesterday to show how Wikipedia’s traffic has grown 8,000% in 5 years due to search referrals. This is an unbelievable statistic but as mentioned in the article that’s what happens when Google ranks all of your pages as #1!

There’s a mixture of opinions but many SEO’s would agree that Wikipedia shouldn’t appear in Google’s top 10 for searches on nearly every piece of content they have. I think it depends on the specific search term, but in my opinion Wikipedia provides little value when ranking #1 for searches such as SEO and restaurant. Most people performing these queries would be looking for somewhere to eat, or looking for SEO advice, blogs or tools. If they wanted to find a definition a “what is …” or “define:…” query would have worked fine.

Lets take a look at the results for a Google search on holidays:
Google search for holidays

Surely people know what a holiday is!

And how do you think Wikipedia would perform if they used Google AdWords?

Wikipedia Google AdWords ad

I would imagine an ad like this would be lucky to get a CTR of 0.1% with a low quality score, but it’s not a problem in the organic listings.

Google has become by far the leading search engine because it gives searchers what they are looking for, and there is an argument that Wikipedia mixes up the results to provide a different type of listing, I agree with this to a certain extent but in all reality it’s nowhere near being the most relevant webpage for any of the above searches. Although not all of it’s rankings are unfair, if you search for a footballer, for example, you get quality content and stats from Wikipedia which deserves it’s ranking at the top as it’s useful to the searcher.

How can Google’s algortihm change to prevent Wikipedia’s SERPs domination?
In my opinion the Google algorithm should pay less attention to the strength of wikipedia.org as a whole domain, calculating rankings based upon the inbound links to a specific page instead. If your content is of a higher quality and more relevant to the actual search term this should be out ranking Wikipedia, but how do you compete with 5 million links?

These rankings would be completely different if the algorithm considered that only 2,000 inbound links are relevant, probably less when you consider no-one should really be linking to this! :)

What do you think, does Wikipedia rightfully deserve most of it’s rankings and provide searchers with the information they are looking for? Or is Wikipedia irrelevant for many search terms and ranking far too highly?

Something which I find very frustrating with Yahoo Search Marketing is how to display your ads to a worldwide audience. The current system only allows you to geographically target the location which your account is registered in, for example UK accounts can only target the UK and Ireland market. You can unblock targeted continents in your account settings, but this means that while your ad will be displayed outside of the UK it will only appear on www.yahoo.co.uk and not www.yahoo.com.

I found this information quite difficult to find at first but the email below from Yahoo clears up some of these issues and might be useful for people experiencing similar issues:

“We would like to inform you that even though you have unblocked the continents on your account this does not mean that your ad’s will show on the respective websites. This means that if someone in the US goes to www.yahoo.co.uk and enters a keyword that your ad will show. If however you want your ad’s to show on www.yahoo.com you would need to open a US account or other account depending on the country you wish to advertise in.

If you wish to advertise in other countries and you have an existing account with Yahoo! Search Marketing, you now have an opportunity to set up a sister account. A sister account allows you to have the same login details as your existing Yahoo! Search Marketing account.

To set up a sister account for any of our marketplaces please email us with the following information. Tell us what you would like your account to be called, which marketplace(s) you require the account(s) for and if you would like the same contact person for each account.

Once the sister account(s) have been set up for the marketplaces you require, you can transfer listings to these new accounts from your existing account.

There will be a set up fee for each sister account which varies by market:
UK account = £60
Other EU marketplaces = €50″

I’ve found the content network is an excellent method of getting large quantities of cheap traffic converting at a positive ROI. But in my experience most pay per click campaigns I’ve taken over have not maximised their performance on the content network, below are the main reasons why I’ve found accounts seem to under perform.

  • Disregarding the content network completely
    Many advertisers focus only on the search network, I think Anton Konikoff’s quote about getting traffic from contextual ads at SES San Jose yesterday sums up why it’s always worth trying to target this audience; “Provides access to everyone who reads online (not just those who search)”.
  • Not setting individual content network bids
    Some people don’t check the “Let me set separate prices for content clicks” campaign setup box, the quality of traffic from the content network is never (or at least very rarely) as high as the search network so you should definitely be setting separate bids here.
  • Targeting all worldwide locations
    Click fraud for contextual ads is a commonly discussed issue and is one of the main reasons people choose to stay away from the content network completely. I normally begin by selecting the main English speaking countries (US, UK, Canada, Ireland and Australia). For high budget account’s it also makes sense to separate countries and regions into individual campaigns so that it’s performance can be tracked and managed individually.
  • Not splitting keywords into small ad groups
    This has obvious advantages for the search network as you can use more specifically targeted ad descriptions for each keyword, but it also helps to monitor the cost per conversion of content network clicks more closely.
  • Failing to test, test, test
    This is probably the final rule in every search marketing list but trial and error testing is very important to monitor how new changes have affected the account. Keeping a close eye on the cost per conversion figure will help you to set bids based upon it’s performance to keep the campaign cost-effective.

These are all fairly basic tips but I’ve found these changes have a positive impact upon many account’s advertising on the content. To improve this further you could also exclude negative sites and setup pay per action (PPA) and site targeted campaigns.

UK Yahoo Search Marketing accounts will use the new ranking model from July 23rd. The ranking model, which was launched in the US back in February, uses the bid amount and quality score to determine an ad’s rank in search results.

Here’s the email sent out by Yahoo! this morning:
“Dear Advertiser,

With new features like ad testing, geo-targeting and fast ad activation, the new Sponsored Search gives you more ways to connect with customers searching for what you sell.

During the week commencing July 23rd, 2007, we are introducing a new ranking model in the UK that considers an ad’s quality and bid amount. The new model is designed to help you spend less time in bidding wars with other advertisers and more time creating the most relevant, effective ads, which can help drive better results for your business.

Here’s a quick summary of this important change:

  • Both bid amount and ad quality will determine an ad’s rank in search results the week commencing July 23rd, 2007.
  • This will replace the current method, in which ads are ranked by bid amount only (bid-to-position).
  • This is designed to allow you to focus less on competitive bidding practices and more on the quality of your ads.
  • By improving the quality of your ads and making them more relevant to users, you may be rewarded with a better ranking and/or a lower cost for your ads.

Example of How Ads May be Ranked
The graphic below helps illustrate a scenario that may result from this change:

Note: The graphic above is provided for illustrative purposes only, and will not actually appear in your account.

What is “Ad Quality”?
Ad quality is determined by:

  1. The ad’s historical performance – its click-through rate relative to competitors and normalised for position.*
  2. The ad’s expected performance – determined by various relevance factors considered by Yahoo! Search Marketing’s ranking algorithms, relative to other ads displayed at the same time.

Overall ad quality is displayed in a graphical form by the quality index.

Other Important Things to Know

  • We recommend that you review your current max bids. Keep in mind you may be charged up to this amount.
  • Standard match type ads will no longer receive priority placement over Advanced match type ads.

Once you’ve upgraded to the new Sponsored Search system, you’ll be able to gain an understanding of your ad’s overall quality by looking at its quality index.

To learn more about the quality index, the new approach to ad ranking and helpful tips, please click here.

Regards,
Yahoo! Search Marketing”

I receieved the following email from Yahoo! Search Marketing this morning, look’s like we won’t have to wait too much longer for the Panama platform in the UK:

“Dear Advertiser,

The New Sponsored Search Is Coming!

We previously announced that an improved marketing platform is on its way, full of advanced, easy-to-use features that will help you better connect with customers looking for your products and services on Yahoo! Search Marketing’s distribution network. Please take a moment to read our plans for assisting you during the transition to the new Sponsored Search.

We’ve been thoroughly testing our systems to help ensure a quality experience once advertiser accounts are upgraded, and will shortly begin the process of notifying advertisers about their account upgrade.

You will be notified of your upgrade date two weeks in advance of your upgrade. You will also be able to access a preview of what your account will look like after the upgrade, to help you become familiar with the features and the layout of the new control panel. If you’re happy with your preview, we encourage you to upgrade your account during this week. This will help ensure that your upgraded account closely resembles the preview.

Many resources will be available to help you make a smooth transition. We’ve created an extensive Upgrade Centre to assist you during the transition. Full of tips, tutorials and FAQs, the Upgrade Centre will walk you through all of the new features, as well as the best practices for managing your new Sponsored Search account. You can find all of these resources by visiting the Upgrade Centre at newsponsoredsearch.yahoo.co.uk.

Please note that there will be no change at the time of account upgrades to the way listings are ranked; they will continue to be ranked by bid as they are today. Over the coming months, we will change the way ads are ranked, taking ad quality into account, as well as bid. More detailed information will be provided regarding this change before it occurs.

Your new upgraded account will be governed by new Terms and Conditions which will take effect on upgrade. We advise you to click here and print off the new Terms and Conditions and make sure you are happy with them. You agree that these Terms and Conditions shall apply to your account when it is upgraded.

We look forward to bringing you the new Sponsored Search.

Regards,
Yahoo! Search Marketing”

I meant to post this on Friday but didn’t quite get round to it, anyway here’s a recap of the pay-per-click advertising news I found of interest during the last week.

Google AdWords

Yahoo! Search Marketing

Microsoft adCenter

General Pay Per Click

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