Yahoo Sponsored or Google AdWords? What's Best for Kara Vita.

Yahoo Sponsored or Google AdWords? What's Best for Kara Vita.

When comparing the primary pay-per-click search engines, you might be challenged to figure out which is best for you. The top two are Google AdWords and Yahoo Sponsored Search. It's a good idea to start your strategies for getting targeted visitors with search engines with a small budget, spreading it out over a few different search engines to experiment and see where your target market may be lurking.

We recommend you begin by viewing the wonderful tutorials and flash overviews offered by Google and Yahoo. Check below for a few examples, you'll find others at Google and Yahoo:

Pay-per-click Yahoo Search: Overview
http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/rc/srch/tu_srch.php
Flash presentation explains Yahoo sponsored search.

AdWord Options for Keyword Matching Explained
https://services.google.com/marketing/stats/tutorial_redirect
Perfecting your Google AdWord targeting and filter worthless clicks.

Targeting a Local Market with Google AdWords
http://services.google.com/tutorial/adw_loc_target/adw_loc_target.html
Reach local area prospects by region or locale.

Let's compare how Yahoo and Google handle keyword bidding:

Sponsored ads at Yahoo

• Yahoo adjusts your bid to 1 cent over your next lowest competitor. Thus, if you bid $3.00 per click, and the next highest bid is $1.95 per click, you will only pay $1.96 per click.
• Yahoo allows you to see who you are bidding against and what they are bidding, so you know exactly where you will rank, and how much you will pay.
• Yahoo's maximum bid is $999.99
• Yahoo's minimum bid is $0.10

AdWords by Google

• Google keeps secret what you will pay per click. Thus, if you bid $3.00 per click, you will pay anywhere from $0.05 to $3.00 per click.
• Google does not allow you to know how much your competitors are bidding per click.
• An advantage with Google is that you will rank higher if your click-through rate (CT rate) is better (a CT rate is the ratio of clicks on your ad to the number of times your ad is shown). Thus, you may have a better rank than your competitor, even if he or she bids more than you (because of your CT rate).
• Google's maximum bid is $100.00
• Google's minimum bid is $0.05

New Google AdWords keyword status changes: Simplified keyword states and quality-based minimum bids.

NEW: Google announced in early August 2005 that they will simplify their keyword status system and introduce quality-based minimum bids, giving us more control to run all keywords we find important.

Let's See How This Works

Each keyword will now be assigned a minimum bid that is based on the quality (also called Quality Score) of your keyword in your account. If your keyword or Ad Group's maximum cost-per-click (CPC) meets the minimum bid, your keyword will be active and trigger ads. If it doesn't, your keyword will be inactive and will not trigger ads.

Previosly, keyword statuses were called normal, in trial, on hold, and disabled. Under the new rules, this will be replaced with active (triggering ads) or inactive (not triggering ads). No more slowed or disabled keywords if no do not have a minimum clickthrough rate (CTR) threshold.

Tips, Tips, Tips... They just keep on coming!

Pay-per-click advertising tips for the Kara Vita consultant continue below:

• If your product or service is something that can be related to a locale, like a city, state or region you may be able to find some ripe tomatoes in phrases like: 'retirement homes in Florida', 'Mississippi flat rate phone service', 'herbal sunscreen for southwestern sun', 'indoor air filters for Los Angeles'.
• Discover more keywords by narrowing down to extreme specifics. People can be VERY specific when they search. Use names of months and years like '2004 tax savings', 'May flowers', 'Christmas of 2005' or 'September back to school supplies'.
  
  Let's say you are marketing a broad line of herbal products... why not get a list of all herbs (there may be thousands) and use that list as a keyword list. Maybe your product doesn't contain every herb on the list, but people searching for any ONE herb specifically may be interested in others. Try specific model numbers, makes and designs if your products are sometimes referred to this way: 'Epson stylus CX6400', 'Apple G5', etc.
• Add adjectives to your keywords like: big, purple, new, cheap, affordable, soft, aromatic, healthy, etc.

For additional tips that might improve your pay per click ad campaign review the tips in my previous posts.


Check back next week for the next in this series of PPC tips...


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Kara Vita | PPC | pay per click | Google AdWords | Network Marketing | Yahoo Ads | Dan Hollings | Sponsored Ads | Contextual Ads | AdWords