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Webinar Takeaways
- Takeaways for Creating Successful Campaigns
- Takeaways for Creating Successful Keywords and Ads
- Takeaways for Improving Your Ad Quality
Takeaways for Creating Successful Campaigns
The following tips or "takeaways" are some of the more important points covered in our How to Create Successful Campaigns webinar.Click here to view a recent archive of this webinar.
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Campaigns:
You can create up to 20 campaigns. You should create a separate campaign if you want to geo-target to a specific area, if you want to separate your budget, or if you have a seasonal/limited-time-only promotion or sale that you want to track and promote. Even if you don't immediately plan to do these things, it's still a best practice to separate your account into campaigns. |
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For example, let's say you are a jeweler and you want to separate the budgets for your silver sales from your gold sales. You also want to geo-target your jewelry campaigns to the west coast separately from the east coast to create more relevant ads. To achieve this, you would create four separate campaigns. You might name them "west coast silver jewelry", "east coast silver jewelry", "west coast gold jewelry" and "east coast gold jewelry". You could specify a budget for each.
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Sponsored Search and Content Match® :
Sponsored Search allows your ads to be displayed in response to searches related to your keyword. Content Match helps your ads appear for a broader range of content throughout the Yahoo! distribution network, based on a number of variables, such as the content of your ads and/or user information. |
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Geo-targeting:
When geo-targeting, you can target by the entire market, country, state, city, DMA® or zip code. By selecting DMA®, you can target to a specific Designated Marketing Area, which are determined by Nielsen Media Research and are sometimes larger than cities. They can also overlap state borders. |
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Geo-targeting:
If you've already geo-targeted to a specific area, you may also want to geo-modify your keyword. To geo-modify your keywords, add the name of the city that you want to target to your keyword phrase (e.g., Burbank Jeweler). |
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Geo-targeting:
Geo-targeting works by attempting to match you to the search location of users or their geo-modified search terms. Yahoo! determines this by looking at the search term, the IP address of the searcher, and/or information the searcher has provided to Yahoo! to understand his or her location. |
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Ad Groups:
It’s important that the ads and keywords within your ad groups are related. This factor (among others) can directly influence your quality index score. To have a high quality index score, you need to group relevant ads and keywords in each ad group. |
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For example, if you have a campaign devoted to electronics, it would make sense to devote each ad group to a specific type of electronic that you sell (e.g., an ad group for DVD players, an ad group for cameras, etc.).
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Match Types:
Standard match type ads are displayed for exact matches to your keywords, as well as variations in case (that is, differences in upper- and lowercase letters), singular and plural forms of the keywords, common misspellings of the keywords, and topics relevant to the keywords, ad titles, and ad descriptions. Advanced match type ads are displayed for a broader range of searches related to your keywords, titles, descriptions, and/or web content. Your first campaign was defaulted into Advanced match. |
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Excluded Words:
If you are using the Advanced match type as your distribution tactic, consider using excluded words at either the ad group level (on the Choose Keywords page) or at the account level (under the Administration tab). |
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For example, if you are selling gold rings and you’ve selected the Advanced match type, you’ll want to add excluded words to help ensure that you are getting relevant traffic. For instance, you might exclude “Lord of the” to eliminate traffic from searchers looking for “Lord of the Rings”.
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Bidding and Daily Spending Limit:
You can specify and manage bids at both the ad group level and the keyword levels. You can specify your daily spending limit at both the account (Account Daily Spending Limit) and campaign (Campaign Daily Spending Limit) levels. Be careful to balance your bids and your daily spending limit wisely. |
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For example, if you set your keyword bid at $.75 per day and your Account Daily Spending Limit is set at $1.00 per day, you may receive very few clicks per day.
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Competitor Ads:
You can get ideas for your ads by viewing other ads displayed in response to searches on your keywords. To view those ads, click the keyword in the center of the Create Your Ad screen. A pop-up window will appear to show you what is currently showing in search results for that keyword. You can scroll through the keywords by using the buttons at the bottom of the pop-up window. |
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Keyword Insertion:
Make sure your ad title and description is relevant for all of the keywords in your ad group. One way to do this is to use the Insert Keyword feature. This feature automatically inserts each keyword into the title or description when it is displayed in response to a user query. On the Create Your Ad screen, you will see this option appear to the bottom right of the title or description field once you start to type in the field. |
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For example, if your ad group is focused on selling different types of rings, you could use keyword insertion in your ad title to insert any of the keywords (i.e., silver rings, gold rings, promise rings, etc.) in your ad.
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Default Text:
When using keyword insertion, you’ll be prompted for default text. This text will appear if the keyword is too long to fit in the ad title (40 character limit) or description (70 character limit). |
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For example, let’s say that you make your default text “Rings”. Your ad title reads, “Handcrafted {KEYWORD:Rings} made just for you”. If a user searches on “sterling silver promise rings”, your ad will still come up in search results. But since that keyword will make your ad title too long to display, the user will see “Handcrafted Rings made just for you”.
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Alternate Text:
You can edit alternate text at the keyword level. If you use keyword insertion and your default text is “rings”, you may want to change that default text for certain keywords in the ad group. |
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For example, if the user searches for “sterling silver promise rings” and your ad that reads “Find a rings made just for you” appears, you’re going to want to change the default text for that keyword so it will read “Find a ring made just for you”. You can do this by clicking the keyword on the Campaigns tab. Scroll down to check the Alternate Text checkbox for that keyword. This is where you can enter “ring” so that the ad will appear correctly.
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Ad Testing:
Ad testing is automatically enabled once you create more than one ad in an ad group. Ad testing will test your ads against one another and, through our ad optimization feature, use the one with the best click-through-rate (or other metric you specify) more often. Using ad testing is a best practice, because it can help you refine your marketing message. |
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Display URL vs Destination URL:
Your display URL is the URL that will be displayed at the bottom of your ad. Your destination URL is the URL of the web page that will be displayed when your ad is clicked. You may want to use a shorter display URL if your destination URL is long or confusing. |
Creating Successful Keywords and Ads - Webinar Takeaways
The following tips or "takeaways" are some of the more important points covered in our How to Create Successful Keywords and Ads webinar.Click here to view a recent archive of this webinar.
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Finding Keywords:
Review your own web site to get an idea of what keywords you should use. The products and services offered on your site can make relevant keywords. |
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Finding Keywords:
Check your Web server logs to see the terms that are being searched by visitors to your site. This can help you broaden keywords that are commonly searched as well as prioritize bidding to the keywords that are/are not bringing visitors to your site. You can get access to your Web server logs from your server provider. |
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Finding Keywords:
Use your company name or website address as a keyword. |
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Finding Keywords:
Mix and match different words relevant to your products or services to form new keywords. For instance, if you offer Brand A and Brand B clothing on your site, you could create keywords out of Brand A hat, Brand B hat, Brand A jacket, Brand B jacket, etc. |
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Editorial Review:
When you’re submitting keywords for editorial review, remember that tail keywords (e.g., Model number GC546023) or head keywords (e.g., vacation) that may not require intensive editorial review can go online quickly. Other keywords (e.g., adult keywords) may require additional time to go through the editorial review process. |
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For information on our Trademark Guidelines, click here.
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Match Types:
Standard match type ads are displayed for exact matches to your keywords, as well as variations in case (that is, differences in upper- and lowercase letters), singular and plural forms of the keywords, and common misspellings of the keywords. Advanced match type ads are displayed for a broader range of searches related to your keywords, titles, descriptions, and/or web content. |
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Match Types:
If you are using the Advanced match type as your distribution tactic, consider using excluded words at either the ad group level (on the Choose Keywords page) or at the account level (under the Administration tab). |
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For example, if you are selling gold rings and you’ve selected the Advanced match type, you’ll want to add excluded words to help ensure that you are getting relevant traffic. For instance, you might exclude “Lord of the” to eliminate traffic from searchers looking for “Lord of the Rings”.
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Excluded Words:
If using the Advanced match type, you can exclude up to 250 words at the account level (covering the entire account) and you can exclude an additional 250 at the ad group level. |
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Match Types:
The Standard match type setting overrides any Advanced match type setting in the levels below it. For example, if you select Standard match type at the account level, but then select Advanced match type at the campaign level, all of your account levels will still be set to Standard match type. |
How to Improve Your Ad Quality - Webinar Takeaways
The following tips or "takeaways" are some of the more important points covered in our How to Improve Your Ad Quality webinar.
Click here to view a recent archive of this webinar.
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Quality Index:
An ad’s quality index is a relative measure of how relevant it is to users. In determining your quality index, our system takes into account your ad’s click-through rate compared to its average position in search results, as well as to that of other ads displayed at the same time, other keywords in your ad group, and other relevance factors. |
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Ad Ranking:
Ads with a higher quality index can receive higher ranking in Sponsored Search results. Our system calculates an ad’s ranking based on your bid, your ad’s quality and other relevance factors. A high-quality ad may be ranked higher than a poor-quality ad, even if the poor-quality ad’s bid is higher. |
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Improving Ad Quality:
To improve your ad’s quality index, use relevant keywords. Make sure the keywords in your ad group are highly relevant to the ads in the same ad group. |
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Improving Ad Quality:
Include your keyword in your creative. Use the keyword itself in titles and descriptions of your ad. You can use the Insert Keyword feature to help you do this automatically. |
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Improving Ad Quality:
Take advantage of excluded keywords. Use this feature to block certain searches that you think may not be relevant. This can help keep your budget focused on more likely prospects. |
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For example, if you sell portable radios but not ham radio equipment, you can block searches that include the word “ham.”
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Ad Testing:
Use ad testing. You may have noticed that when you create an ad in an Ad Group, you are prompted to create another one. You should do this in all of your ad groups, because when you create more than one ad, our system will test the ads automatically. Ads that perform better then begin to appear more frequently in search results, and you can edit or delete ads that perform poorly. Try different copy, different offers or different display URLs to help determine what works best. |
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Competitor's Ads:
Gather intelligence about your competitors. Search for their products or services so you can look at their ads. Take a look at your competitors’ ads to determine if your offers are as strong as theirs. |
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Improving Ad Quality:
Offer specials. Consider including special offers in your ad copy. Take a look at a calendar: It’s chock-full of holidays that you should consider taking advantage of. Limited-time offers, free shipping, two-for-ones, free gifts, contests and so forth can be very effective. Remember, it’s not just about your ad, it’s also about the value that users think you can deliver. |
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