Crunch Time

Tear yourself away from The Madness for a few minutes to take a closer look at your keywords in light of the upcoming minimum bid change

Coach John Wooden It’s March, and all across this land of ours, people are hard at work on their computers, trying to figure out…who could win the NCAA basketball tournament. Is Davidson for real, is UCLA the team to beat—or is it Tennessee, North Carolina, or some fabled “Cinderella” team?

Yahoo! Search Marketing advertisers may want to put down their brackets for a few minutes and spend an equal amount of time taking a deep dive into their pool of keywords, because with the upcoming change to the way minimum bids are set, it’s a whole new game.

Staying Off the Bubble

In the next few weeks, the switch will be flipped on this new feature, and with it come both opportunities and potential pitfalls. If you have keywords with minimum bids that go down, you may be able to reallocate your money to other keywords or by expanding your keyword roster. Conversely, if you have minimum bids that are headed north, it would be good to know whether you should raise your bids or let the associated keywords go inactive.

You can get ready for the tip-off of the new minimum bid feature by taking a closer look at your keywords, both now and after the new bid requirements are in play. Here are some suggestions on where to focus your efforts:

1. Learn which keywords work best for your business.

Identify your most important keywords by comparing their click-through rates, click volume and performance metrics.
Add these all-star keywords to your “watched keywords” list for easy reference going forward.
Continue to monitor performance metrics regularly to identify changes, both positive and negative.

2. Put your trust in your proven winners.

Invest more of your budget in keywords that are doing well, and get rid of poorly performing ones.
Review their bids and make sure you are bidding to the true value of the keyword.
Diversify: If minimum bids are raised on some of your keywords, find some that remain at lower levels and make them more prominent in your lineup.
Set bids at the keyword level, when appropriate, for greater control.

3. Group relevant keywords together.

Keywords in a single ad group should relate to each other and to the ads in your ad group. This can have a big impact on your quality score, and, potentially, your minimum bids.
Move more general keywords into their own ad group(s) so they don’t affect the quality of your targeted ad groups.

4. Budget wisely.

Have an understanding of what you can spend, so if you do face a situation where minimum bids are higher, you can decide whether to raise bids or increase budgets.
As you set bids, make sure that they meet your ad budget and acquisition targets.

— Jeff Hecox, ~~Bracketologist~~ “Keywordologist”

Photo courtesy dearth85 via Flickr.

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[ Categories: Tips, Updates & Enhancements ]
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No Comments yet Add your own

1. Pay Per Click Journal | March 10th, 2008 at 2:47 pm

We like the term “keywordologist”. This is a great post as with the bids changing, one needs to keep in mind what they should and shouldn’t do to adjust to these changes while using their bids and money wisely.
2. SEO London | March 11th, 2008 at 9:21 am

Well I’ve been doing a lot in YSM and one of may bottlenecks which still bothers me is the delay in approving advertisements.

I was wondering if Yahoo can take steps to improve in approving advertisements?

We work in very dynamic market and we keep on changing keywords quite frequently. And any change in keywords takes 24 hrs+ to get approval.
3. Dan | March 20th, 2008 at 7:07 am

I think it would be best if Google allowed us “Marketing Professionals” to decide what’s quality and what’s not.

I took my budget from Google because of this. Their entire “quaily” concept is nothing but a scam to milk more money from honest advertisers.

I think what these companies are forgetting is that when search marketing becomes less cost effective than direct mail, tv, radio, billboards or the like, there’s no incentive to actually budget for it.

Why would I spend 1.00, 5.00 or even 10.00 to send a virtual postcard to a single person, when I can print and mail a real one for 50 cents?
4. JB | March 20th, 2008 at 9:50 am

I have to agree with SEO London 100%
5. Eches » Yahoo Searc&hellip | April 18th, 2008 at 3:51 pm

[...] Get to know your keyword and its value - Improve your ad quality. - Keep updated with account interface - bids and continually monitor any [...]
6. Bernard Marrast | April 20th, 2008 at 10:02 am

what does this mean to me in increased sales — is this this just a money grab by yahoo
7. Gitazz | April 20th, 2008 at 4:28 pm

I moved away from Google as I was constantly being slapped By google. I thought Yahoo was good as I got good CTR (in spite of lesser market share) I always group tightly knit keywords and write relevant ads. Still Google was never satisfied as they only wanted MORE Money. Is Yahoo going that way too? Like SEO London said it will soon become cheaper to advertise by other methods.
8. Small Biz Web NZ | May 28th, 2008 at 9:12 pm

I have a few clients that run both Yahoo and Google and I must admit, especially since my company had a visit from Yahoo specialists, that my impression with YSM is rising. I will aim to up sell a number of my Google only clients in this. I agree with Gitazz that the CTR’s seem better.