Basics of Google AdWords and Yahoo Sponsored Search for Two Sisters Gourmet.

Basics of Google AdWords and Yahoo Sponsored Search for Two Sisters Gourmet.

Sometimes you feel like flipping a coin when choosing a pay per click search engine. Which one is really best for you? The top two are Google and Yahoo. It's a good idea to start your PPC customer acquisition approach 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. Start your exploration below, you'll find others at Google and Yahoo:

Sponsored Search: Flash Introduction by Yahoo
http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/rc/srch/tu_srch.php
Yahoo sponsored search overview.

Google AdWords: Bidding and Ranking
http://services.google.com/tutorial/bpr/bpr.html
How to improve your AdWord rank and manage your PPC costs.

Google AdWords: How to Optimize
http://services.google.com/tutorial/opt_tips/google_opt.html
Edit your Google ads to attract more qualified visitors

Google Vs. Yahoo? Do the bidding policies make a difference?

Yahoo Ad Sponsoring Rules (bidding)

• 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

Google AdWords

• 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.

UPDATE: 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.

Google' New Policy

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 Two Sisters Gourmet 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.

Last week I posted the another round of search engine marketing tips and yet more in the weeks before that. Check previous weeks for more ideas.


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Two Sisters Gourmet | PPC | pay per click | Google AdWords | Network Marketing | Yahoo Ads | Dan Hollings | Sponsored Ads | Contextual Ads | AdWords