Category: Pay Per Click

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Yahoo Sponsored Search 1/2 Price Sale

That’s right if you have the right product, you can generate as many conversions as you can on Google AdWords but at nearly half the click cost! The big caveat is, is your product the right product for Yahoo Sponsored Search?

Not every Yahoo account will out perform a Google account, but here’s what I have found:

Beauty products will do better on Yahoo PPC  than Google AdWords.

Real estate will do better on Yahoo PPC than Google AdWords.

Some education programs and course offerings will do better on Yahoo than Google.

The biggest rule of thumb is if the product is personal in nature or needs a personal relationship to sell or provide it, then Yahoo will be better. If the product is more technical in nature then Google AdWords will beat Yahoo Sponsored Search hands down.

Sometimes you simply need to try Yahoo to see what will happen after you have a mature Google AdWords program. If you have success on Yahoo, you will most likely be successful on Microsoft adCenter. If you are not successful on Yahoo then don’t expand to adCenter in most cases you won’t do any better there. These are  just my personal observations from years of account management. Your best bet is always to start on Google AdWords first and then expand carefully from there.

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AdWords Content When Do You Use It?

There is a time and place for advertising in the content network. When would that time be you ask?

Typically, we do not recommend advertising in the content network as we know from historical data that content does not convert into sales at the same percentage that search converts. However there is a reason to advertise in content. If you have a new product or brand name and you need massive exposure, content advertising can be excellent. If you expect sales from this exposure you may want to rethink your expectations of content advertising performance.

When advertising in content do not pay the full amount per click that you would pay in search. Google by default will enable content exposure at the same cost per click setting you select for search. With this particular tactic Google will rapidly soak up your cash so be careful about your budget.

In some cases to control the budget we will even set up separate campaigns for content advertising. Google does not recommend doing this, but their reason is really self serving. My feeling is that if you can control how much you spend in content and are able to clearly see what conversions come to you via the content network, you can adjust your advertising spend more appropriately.

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Getting the Most Bang for Your Buck – Special Issue

You’ll want to click in to read our November e-newsletter that tells you how to get the most bang for your buck on the Internet. Learn our top picks for pay per click, search engine optimization, and e-newsletter services.

With the economy tanking and business climates slowing, now’s the time to check out our tips to see if you can easily implement some of them to get your own business rolling again.

Here’s the link!

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It’s a Great Time to Consider Yahoo Pay Per Click

This past week we have helped more clients migrate their advertising programs into Yahoo Sponsored Search. With the escalating costs of Google AdWords, significant drop in AdWords ability to deliver conversions, and the quality score algorithm changes, Yahoo is looking better all the time.

Yahoo has a very good ad serving program, is a good value for the money, and has consistently supplied quality conversions. Yahoo’s only problem is that not everyone uses Yahoo as their search engine; meaning that you get less “reach” when you advertise on Yahoo versus on Google.

We have found however, that as a supplement to your Google AdWords program, Yahoo can deliver the lead conversions that you are looking for at nearly one third to one half less per click than you will pay on AdWords. Additionally, if you are the type of person who really wants to manage your own advertising account versus hiring a professional manager, like us, then Yahoo is an excellent place to advertise and even start checking our pay per click for the first time.

Yahoo has a very easy to understand ad control panel, provides quality keyword discovery tools, and is very easy to manage on an ongoing basis. Although the Yahoo program is less sophisticated than Google’s, it is easy to use and makes getting up and running fairly painless.

With AdWords upping the ante in regards to a big jump in click costs since the algorithm change on 9-15-08, more of our clients are lowering AdWords budgets to fund a jump into Yahoo. Some are simply allocating more dollars for Yahoo and some are stealing AdWords money to fund new Yahoo accounts.

AdWords had system maintenance on Saturday 10-11. but it is still to early to say if this was an adjustment to the highly unpopular quality score update they did in September, or an additional tweak to wring more money from your pocketbook. Whichever it is, we’ll be sure to let you know as we start to see the impact in the nearly 35 accounts that we manage in a wide variety of business sectors.