More (Keyword) Power, Please

The enhanced Add Keywords feature can help you power up your search marketing campaigns

The crux of a generator is to produce power. Massive generators provide electrical power for cities. Portable generators power your campsite or tailgate party. A guitar amplifier generates sound for your guitars whether you’re soloing or playing power chords.

In your search marketing campaign, relevant keywords help drive traffic, but generating the right keywords can be a labor-intensive process.

To give you more search marketing power, we recently expanded our Add Keywords feature to provide you with three easy options for adding keywords to existing ad groups. Think of it as a convenient and easy-to-operate engine that can help you generate keywords.

Here’s why you should take advantage of the Add Keywords tool
• It has an easy-to-use drop-down menu with three options to meet your needs.
• Adding more relevant keywords may improve the performance of your ad group.
• It can save you time in determining what keywords to add.

Where to Find the Add Keywords Tool
The Add Keywords tool is located on your Ad Group details page. Just click on “Add Keywords” then select one of three options: “Quick Add,” “Choose from List” and “Research Keywords.”

The Quick Add Keywords Option (New!)
Clicking on this option will open a dialogue box. Just enter the keywords or keyword phrases you want and click “Save Changes.” This is a really easy way, when you know what keywords you want, to add keywords to your account. Be careful not to use commas or semicolons at the end of each line when you enter keywords in the dialogue box. You can add up to 500 keywords or keyword phrases.

Choose from List
This option uses existing information from your ad group and doesn’t require your input. A list of related keywords based on information about your ad group will appear if you click on this option. You can then add keywords to your ad group by selecting the checkbox next to the keywords and then clicking “Save Changes” when you’re done.

Research Keywords
This feature is similar to the Add Keywords function with which you may already be familiar. If you choose this option you can continue to add keywords to your list by entering keywords in the box on the left, or keyword phrases into the gray input box on the right side of your screen. The left box will generate some keyword suggestions after you click “Get Keywords.” When you’re finished, click “Save Changes.”

There you go—three easy options for adding relevant keywords are now in your power!

For more information, visit the Help center.

– Roger Park, Manager, Marketing Communications

Slice up Your Advertising Pie

One advertiser’s experience can help you set up your budgets right

One of the reps on our Customer Solutions team recently took a call from a new advertiser, who had run into a roadblock that left him perplexed.

Apparently he awoke one morning at 3:00 a.m., his brain churning with an idea for a campaign for a product he sells on his site. He jumped on the computer to set up the new campaign, picking keywords, writing ads and setting bids. Feeling confident that this new campaign was going to get a ton of clicks, he set a daily spending limit of $50 and went back to bed.

But a few days later, when he checked its results, he discovered that the campaign was getting capped at about $20 in clicks each day. Care to guess what the problem was? (I’ll wait…)

And the answer is: He forgot to check if he had enough room in his account budget for the new campaign.

Too Many Hands in the Pie
This tale makes an important point: One tweak to an account can affect everything else. Think of your account budget as your “money pie”; you have to slice it up just right. Each of your campaigns will take a piece.

So if you add a new campaign, its spend will eat up a portion of the pie, leaving less spend for your existing campaigns. The account budget trumps other spending limits; you can’t spend more than your account limit. This seems like an obvious fact, but as our unwitting advertiser discovered, it can be lost in the excitement of launching a new campaign. To make room for the new campaign, you might have to consider reducing the spend from other campaigns, so that all of your “slices” add up to the total account budget.

If you’re off balance—no matter how high you set the daily spend of your biggest campaign—your other campaigns could be shut off as our system works to keep you from going over your budget. In this case, you’d need to either bake a bigger account pie, or cut your campaigns into smaller slices. Who’s hungry?

Cooking up the Perfect Search Marketing Plan
Before creating a new campaign, think about how much money you have to work with across your entire account. Then set up your campaign budgets to spend their portions of the account budget accordingly. As you tinker around with budgets, if you’re not sure how your changes will play out, make sure you take advantage of the forecasting tools in your account. As you enter different bid amounts, it analyzes statistics to help predict what your average position could potentially be in the search results, and thus, what your potential is for impressions and clicks.

Don’t “Set and Forget”
You should always be monitoring all parts of your account on a regular basis. This is your business and your money, so get in the habit of scanning all of the information on the dashboard.

If you simply “set and forget,” you’re giving up one of the biggest advantages that search marketing has over any other advertising vehicles—the ability to change, re-adjust, tinker and refocus your strategies at any time to reach your target audience. And take a lesson from one of your colleagues: If you decide to make any changes, consider how they will affect the daily spends set for your individual campaigns, and your account as a whole. You’ll sleep much better at night for it!

— Kastle Waserman, Communications Manager, Customer Solutions

Blueberry pie picture from hfb on Flickr

Many Happy Returns

How to match your campaigns to tax season consumer behavior

Like it or not, tax season is here again, and all over the country people are filing their returns and keeping their fingers crossed. It’s not surprising that many folks are expecting a refund from Uncle Sam, but what they plan to do with that refund may get your attention.

Big spenders

While the majority of refund recipients plan to spend their new-found fortunes on paying down debt and shoring up savings, research* shows that about one in ten taxpayers will dedicate a portion of their refund to major purchases or a vacation.

That means that advertisers who offer “big-ticket” items (cars, plasma televisions, etc.) or vacations may want to consider creating campaigns targeted toward consumers who intend to use a portion of their refunds for luxury items.

Women typically account for more than 60 percent of the visitors to tax sites as the season begins in January and February. However, in the last six weeks leading up to the April 15 deadline, it’s men who make up almost 60 percent of tax site visitors. So, do you pitch your romantic getaway cruises or your extreme adventure packages? Depends on the calendar. (We’re not saying which of these would be better for which group. We’ve learned our lessons.)

…and penny pinchers

Not everyone wants to spend. Advertisers who offer debt management or consolidation services might consider creating campaigns that appeal to the large majority of people who plan to apply their tax refunds toward reducing debt.

The first week of February usually sees the biggest spikes in visits to accounting web sites, showing that that people have received their W-2s and are beginning to file online. A second spike usually appears in the second week of April, representing last-minute filers trying to beat the deadline. The bottom line here is that advertisers who specialize in tax services and merchandise will want to have their ads in place and prepared to meet the demand, and make sure those campaigns are fully funded and monitored throughout tax season.

— Noah Belson, Content Quality Analyst/Tax Man

*All research from: 2007 Tax Returns Consumer Intentions and Actions Survey, conducted by BIGresearch for National Retail Federation

Search Is Opening Up

Yahoo! Search gives Web site owners ways to make their search results more relevant

You’ve been hearing a lot of talk from us lately about openness—open ad exchanges and open development platforms—but now Yahoo! Search itself is open. As an advertiser, this gives you a way to add much more relevant information about your site to our search results—and have more control over the way that information is displayed.

“Because the platform is open it gives all Web site owners—big or small—an opportunity to present more useful information on the Yahoo! Search page, as compared to what is presented on other search engines,” says Vish Makhijani, SVP & GM, Yahoo! Search in a blog post this week. Instead of just a title, abstract and URL, you can add into your search results the data currently buried in your websites—things like ratings, reviews and images.

You should read the whole post on the Yahoo! Search Blog, but to whet your appetite, here are before-and-after examples of the difference when a social media site like Yelp starts adding some of its content to search results:

Before:

After:

You’ll be hearing more about this change in the next few months. Time to start thinking about how openness could help you.

—The Team

Search Marketing Expo – SMX West

Hear from Yahoo! experts in Santa Clara, CA this week

Whether you’re a seasoned search marketing pro or a new advertiser taking your first search marketing steps, Search Marketing Expo - SMX West promises to deliver great value for those attending the conference this week, February 26-28 at the Santa Clara Convention Center.

SMX West has designed some stellar sessions to help firm up your search marketing goals. For the newbies, there’s an SMX Boot Camp covering the fundamentals of search engine marketing and design. And for the more advanced, the expo will feature more than 20 sessions to match your skill level.

We’ll be there participating in many of the sessions, with Yahoo! Search Marketing panelists offering their insights on best practices, tip and strategies to help give you that extra edge in your search marketing endeavors.

Here’s a sample of some of the sessions at SMX West.

Tuesday, February 26
10:30 – 11:45 a.m.
Decrypting Quality Scores
Yahoo! panelist: David Pann, VP, Sponsored Search Product Management

Wednesday, February 27
4:45 – 6:00 p.m.
Paid Search Roundtable
Featured Yahoo! Panelist: Dmitri Krakovsky, VP, Global Product Management

Thursday, February 28
9:00 – 10:00 a.m.
Keynote: Generation Next: Search in the Coming Decade
Yahoo! panelist: Larry Heck, Search and Advertising Sciences

There are many more exciting sessions, so for more information on the schedule, check out the conference agenda.

For more information check out the Yahoo! Search Blog, too.

Not able to attend SMX West this year? No worries…we’ll report back with some conference coverage, so stay tuned for best practices and other strategic gleanings.

— Roger Park, Manager, Marketing Communications

Reserve Prices

Minimum bids no longer fixed at $.10 for Sponsored Search

If you go to any auction, whether it’s Sotheby’s, eBay or your rural county’s hog auction, there’s usually a reserve price (or minimum bid) set according to what is believed to be the minimum value of the product. It’s their way of making sure that no one walks away with a cheap Van Gogh just because people aren’t lifting those paddles fast enough.

Following the auction model, we are changing the way we set the minimum bids required to participate in a Sponsored Search keyword market. In the next several weeks, we will start calculating a variable minimum bid for some of the keywords you’re bidding on. That means that sometimes the minimum bid may be lower than 10¢. Sometimes it may be higher. Content Match minimum bids currently will remain at 10¢.

What your minimum bid means

An auction house has guidelines it keeps in mind when it sets a minimum bid, or the reserve price—how rare a painting is, how famous the guy who painted it is, things like that. We have guidelines that help us set minimum bids, too. Minimum bids can be based on multiple factors, including the quality of the keyword and its value—or how much we think that keyword is worth to its bidders. Here’s how we do it:

Quality—If you haven’t noticed before, we like quality. High quality generally means that your ads are being clicked more often, relative to your competitors. And that usually means that searchers are finding what they want more readily. So we try to reward quality—first with higher rankings and lower costs, and now, potentially, with lower minimum bids.

Value—While figuring out the value of a keyword can be complicated, we may look at a number of things to determine what it’s worth: for example, how many advertisers are bidding on your keyword, and what they’re willing to pay for it. (Note: we do not use conversion data to determine minimum bids.)

A keyword term becomes “active”—switched “on” in the system and eligible for display—when your bid is equal to or greater than your minimum bid. Keywords become inactive when your bid falls below your minimum. You will be notified in an alert on your Account Dashboard if your bid is about to drop below your minimum, and you’ll have a grace period of up to a few days to raise your bid to keep your keyword active.

What you can do to prepare

A lot of the best practices that are always important in search marketing are especially important when you’re managing your minimum bids. Here are some of the best ways to manage your account:

Get to know your keywords and their value. Since variable minimum bids may be set for each of your keywords, it is important to know which ones work best for your business.

Improve your ad quality. Better ad quality can potentially translate into lower minimum bids.  Plus, it also affects the price you pay per click and your ads’ position in search results.

Learn about updates to the account interface. To help make your bids easier to manage, we are offering some enhancements to your account interface. These include a new search and management tool that allows you to find keywords that are below the minimum bid—bids too low for your keyword to become active—within a selected ad group or campaign.

For more about this change, read our FAQs.

—The Team

More is Better

Excluded keyword limits have increased from 50 to 250 to help relevance

Although the word “excluded” may sound negative, especially if you were someone who was left out of the prom, the Excluded Words feature is definitely a positive when you need help blocking unwanted searches you believe may not be relevant. (And yep, excluded keywords are also called negative keywords—but they’re still positive.)

If you’re using the Advanced match type, you should definitely use Excluded Words to help you refine your matches.

Sometimes, rejecting words that may not be relevant to what you are selling is a good strategy.  Whether rejecting words is supposed to feel good or not is between you and your therapist. In the past, the maximum for the Excluded Words list was 50. Well, we recently increased the maximum to 250 words at both the account and the ad group level to give you more control.

Why use Excluded Words?
• Excluded Words may provide you with more control over Advanced Match traffic.
• This feature helps block unwanted and irrelevant searches.
• You may block searches not related to what you are selling, helping you to receive more targeted leads.

Identify the keywords that do not apply to your business but may be commonly used by potential customers. If you are a travel company selling cruises exclusively to Acapulco, if you use the Advanced match type for the keyword “cruise,” you may want to exclude keywords like “Caribbean” and “Alaska.” 

Finding Excluded Words in Your Account
Excluded words can be set at the account level in the Administration tab of your account. You can also activate or change excluded words (up to 250) at the ad group level in the Ad Group Settings page. Here’s how:

• Go to your Ad Group Settings page.
• Click on “Tactic Settings.”
• On the “Tactic Settings” page the “Excluded Words” feature is displayed.
• Click on “Excluded Words” to open the entry field.
• Add your excluded words but do not to use any commas or semicolons after each word.
• Click “Save Changes,” to process the Excluded Words list.

Now you’re ready for more potential relevancy.

Whether you’re selling only new electronic consumer goods and want to exclude keywords like “used,” or you give music lessons only to children and want to exclude words like “adult,” we recommend that you consider adding excluded words to help guide the right kind of searchers to your ads.  

For more information on Excluded Words, visit the Help center.

—Roger Park, Manager, Marketing Communications

Velvet Rope photo, copyright Jolene Oldham/OldhaMedia

Start Spreading the News

SES hits NYC in March; take advantage of a special 20% Yahoo! discount to attend 

They say you never forget your first time. Granted, that phrase isn’t usually referring to “when I visited New York City,” but for this lifelong Left Coaster, it remains etched in my mind. Eleven years old and on a summer trip with the folks, I can still remember the cab ride from JFK to Manhattan, staring wide-eyed as the collection of skyscrapers grew larger and larger. Many natives may take New York’s hugeness and hubris in stride, but even as an adult, it’s still pretty thrilling to visit The City That Never Sleeps.

You can reconnect with The Big Apple yourself, while at the same time growing your search marketing acumen, by attending the upcoming Search Engine Strategies conference, March 17-20 at the Hilton New York. In the past, SES has yielded a wealth of data and tactics for everyone from Fortune 500 marketing pros to online sole proprietors who want to take the next step in their advertising efforts.

The SES Expo—consisting of booths with the requisite tchotchkes and eager company representatives—is free to attend, provided you sign up in advance. Of course, Yahoo! will be there, so be sure to come by and say hello. The Conference section of SES includes keynotes speeches, valuable panel discussions and other breakout sessions. As a reader of the Yahoo! Search Marketing Blog, you can get a 20% discount off of your Conference registration fee, using the discount code 20YAHOO at the official SES site.

Springtime in New York City: The Central Park flowers will be starting to bloom, and—by picking the collective brains of search marketing’s superstars–so can your paid search campaigns.

— Jeff Hecox, still aspiring to King of the Hill and Top of the Heap

 Photo courtesy jbparker via Flickr

Top Search Agency Shining Bright

Yahoo! congratulates Outrider on winning the 3rd Annual Searchlight Award

If you ask us, the biggest election story last Tuesday was not the Obama and McCain landslides in the Potomoc primaries, but rather, the election of this year’s winner for search marketing excellence. Outrider, the search unit of Group M, was awarded the Searchlight Award for 2008 on a snowy, blustery day at the Time Life Building in New York City. An audience of more than 200 interactive marketers braved the elements to watch four agencies duke it out for top honors.

Expert Perspective
The day began with a stirring keynote by Rob Norman, CEO of Group M Interaction. Rob shared with the audience his thoughts on the intersection of performance marketing and brand advertising, and how Yahoo! is in an ideal position to capitalize on this convergence. It’s always a treat to hear Rob speak, and this keynote was no exception. After Rob finished his remarks, it was on to the finalists.

First to the stage were Renee Robertson and Jessica Mainelli from Carat, who explained how search marketing was used to build awareness and brand intent for Reebok’s “Run Easy” campaign. Panelist Greg Sterling, a local search expert, was impressed with the use of geo-targeting in this campaign, as it tied in nicely with the unique messaging in Carat’s out-of-home buys.

Outrider then walked the audience through its work to promote Smirnoff’s recent additions to the growing “malternative” beverage category. Not wanting to leave anything to chance, chief Outrider Chris Copeland flew in to help sell the audience on its candidacy for the Searchlight Award. One of the most impressive screen shots of the presentation was a search results page on which Outrider had secured multiple search listings for Smirnoff by using both organic and paid search tactics.

Lance Neuhauser and Neal Wilson of Resolution Media presented a case study of work they had done for FedEx around their 2007 Super Bowl buy. While many digital marketers will generally dismiss the efficacy of a Super Bowl buy, the folks from Resolution made a strong case for building on The Big Game for a strong multi-channel effort with an incredible halo effect. They supported their case with compelling data, including an impressive chart taken from the Yahoo! Buzz Index that highlighted the surge in search activity for FedEx immediately following Super Bowl Sunday.

The last agency to showcase its work was Digitas. The firm’s Chris Paul and Matt D’Ercole walked us through an inspirational campaign called “The Members Project,” which called upon American Express members to ideate and vote for projects that would better the world, and American Express would then fund. Digitas discussed how to leverage a parent brand for a philanthropic enterprise, and how to connect social media, video and celebrity endorsements to a search campaign. Chris and Matt showed the great work that can happen when creative and media are tightly aligned.

The audience was then asked to vote, and Outrider was announced as the 2008 Searchlight Award winner. The event was capped off by a comedy performance by Jeff Caldwell and a cocktail reception.

From all of us at Yahoo!, we warmly congratulate not only Outrider, but each of the other finalists. All of us left winners, as we got to hear from these great marketers and expand the way we think about leveraging search marketing in our campaigns.

It’s an event that I look forward to each year, and hope that you can join us in 2009.

— Ron Belanger, Vice President, Agency Development.

Convert Your Clicks

Ten landing page tips to turn visitors into customers

There’s something about a ten-item list that makes us want to get all Hestonian on you and break out the archaic pronouns, especially when it comes to something like getting people who visit your site to actually buy from you. After all, you work hard to get clicks. What could be more important than turning those clicks into customers?

But we’re kind of a live-and-let-live bunch here, and we’re not so big on telling people what they have to do. So consider these a set of suggestions about how to help optimize your landing pages. That way, when people get to your site, they’ll be more likely to make a purchase.

1. Tell them why they should buy from you
According to Marketing Experiments Journal, “Clarity of your value proposition is the most important factor in determining whether a customer buys from you or not.” To evaluate your value proposition, ask yourself the question: “Why should I buy from this site?”

2. Keep ‘em with you
There’s no way you’re going to get a potential customer to the intended destination—the “sale completion” page—if the path to get there is overgrown with weeds or rife with dead ends. This is what Marketing Experiments Journal calls “site flow disruption”; the way to combat it is to express your value proposition throughout the shopping process in a consistent and compelling way.

3. Don’t try to say too much
Don’t clutter your landing page with unnecessary details. Instead:
• Clearly state your key message using as few words as possible
• Use summary descriptions, sub-headings, bulleted lists and short paragraphs
• Adopt a standard one-column format for easy reading.

4. Make it simple
Improve the user experience with a site that is easy to navigate. A simple page layout that employs a clean visual and straightforward design is best. Here’s how:
• Design your site with a clear hierarchy with color and contrast for easily legible text
• Use meaningful and high-quality graphics (don’t clutter with too many)
• Use breadcrumbs to let visitors know where they are on your site
• Employ a clickable logo that takes the visitor to your homepage
• Use color to distinguish between visited and unvisited links.

Just as important, make sure you don’t:
• Employ horizontal scrolling
• Direct links to new browser windows
• Have flash-based content unless required.

5. Call them to action
Focus on one primary action per screen (don’t stuff too many products onto one screen). Make the call-to-action button clearly visible without having to scroll; don’t bury it under pages of information. Consider using tabs or a pop-up box to consolidate information.

6. Get specific
Provide product details and a large product image while displaying incentives—such as free shipping and warranty information—high on the page and close to the product. Don’t discourage visitors by requiring registration to your site.

7. Flaunt what you’ve got
What differentiates you from your competitors? Free shipping (both ways?), discounts, a 365-day warranty, price protection, privacy, customer service, etc.? If you’ve got it, flaunt it!

8. Search yourself
Make your site easy to navigate by helping potential customers find what they are looking for as quickly and easily as possible. A search feature box should be simple and visible with a type-in field, not a link. To help increase conversions, make sure your search results link to product pages.

9. Rally the believers
Credibility is a true testament: people don’t buy from websites, people buy from people. Thus, testimonials from devout customers—or even a letter from the CEO/Editor—persuades the unbelieving.

10. Let them make the choice
“Why should I buy this specific product?” Almost every e-tailer forgets about this, but it’s the question that’s key to Mr. or Ms. Customer’s mind. Prove to him or her why they should buy this over the competitive product by offering reviews, ratings and comparisons.

– Amy Borowicz

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