Welcome to SEM SEO Expert. This site is owned by Toronto based SEM Expert, Nima Asrar Haghighi, and covers topics such as Search Engine Marketing , Search Engine Optimization , Social Media Optimization (SMO), Web Analytics and Affiliate Marketing. SEM stands for Search Engine Marketing and refers to marketing through search engines. SEM experts/specialists market products, services or websites either through SEO (Search Engine Optimization) or through PPC Advertising.
The other major impact of search alliance will be on pay per click (PPC) advertising on both Yahoo and Bing. Microsoft adCenter will become the search advertising platform that will be used by both companies and will manage the search advertising marketplace, including the API platform for bid management and reporting tools for big search marketers and SEM agencies.
Yahoo and Bing Search Alliance
Account history (reporting and scoring) will not be carried over from the Yahoo Search Marketing platform to Microsoft adCenter during transition. Nevertheless, Yahoo will continue to provide access to the last 13 months of Yahoo Search Marketing account reporting and history after the transition.
Advertisers starting new accounts on Microsoft adCenter will need to re-establish their keyword and account histories. Naturally, the marketplace will shift when the Yahoo traffic is added to Bing, so you need to monitor and optimize your account to ensure that everything works smoothly.
If you are already managing keywords on the adCenter platform, that account will retain its reporting and performance history.
As a result of each company continuing to own its own consumer search experience, there may be variances in the number of ads that are displayed in each location on the page.
Moving forward, your ad rank on Yahoo and Bing SERPs will be the same based on several factors including the amount you bid, your ad’s relevance, and your ad’s click-through rate.
Yahoo and Microsoft will enforce their jointly created editorial guidelines. So, advertisers need to review the updated editorial guidelines to see if their ads and keywords are affected as some ads in your account may get disapproved during the transition to adCenter,.
After the search alliance, Yahoo and Microsoft will have a combined market share of 20% – 30% (depending on the market/vertical). If you only run ads on only one of these engines, you should be expecting an increase in your traffic and ad spend. If you currently running ads on both Yahoo and MSN, your overall traffic should theoretically stay the same though Yahoo and MSN believe it will increase.
Search Alliance Market Share
Depending on the market, the situation might be different. However, in most cases, you should be expecting an increase in overall CPC as you will be facing with more competition.
Soon, you will be able to access a transition portal from within your Yahoo Search Marketing account, which will walk you through the step-by-step process of creating a Microsoft Advertising adCenter account and importing your campaigns, or linking an existing adCenter account you may already have.
As a search engine marketing agency, we have been working with Yahoo and Microsoft account teams to plan the transition. The three main options are:
It seems that the Yahoo and Microsoft Search Alliance is going to happen as planned in October and we are not going to wait until the end of holiday season. As announced back in February, Yahoo and Microsoft forged an alliance to provide their users with a new search experience by providing relevant results faster and offering more value for advertisers and in the process challenge Google’s supremacy.
Once the search alliance is in place, the organic search results pages will be served by Bing and paid search listings will be served by Microsoft adCenter instead of Yahoo Search Marketing platform. Nevertheless, Yahoo will continue to enhance the search results by providing relevant content from Yahoo content properties, vertical search and search tools and filters. So, both companies will continue to have differentiated consumer search experiences.
Yahoo and Microsoft search alliance does not cover companies’ display advertising and other web properties such as email and instant messaging.
In the upcoming posts I will talk about the impacts of Yahoo and Microsoft search alliance on PPC campaigns on Yahoo and Bing (MSN) as well as what needs to be done as far as SEO is concerned.
Back in May, Google introduced AdWords Broad Match Modifier by launching the beta version in Canada and UK. The broad match modifier is a targeting feature that lets advertisers create keyword phrases in their AdWords accounts which have greater reach than phrase match and more control than broad match. Google has now rolled out the broad match modifier globally.
The earlier test I did, in some of the niche accounts, the new match type has proven successful. The challenge I had earlier with these niche B2B accounts was that with the phrase or exact match types I was not getting enough traffic and with the broad match, I was getting a lot of not-so-relevant impressions and clicks. So, on a daily basis I had to add negative keywords to my Google AdWords Ad Groups and Campaigns.
With the new modified broad match, I was able to create a balance between getting enough traffic and keeping the need to add so many negative keywords to minimum and improve the overall ROI.
Depending on the type of campaign, this new AdWords matching type might or might become handy. Nevertheless, it is definitely worth trying.
Google has been trying a new format of ad delivery for AdWords. It seems that Google is testing showing ads under different headings.
The ads with the higher quality score, most likely triggered by exact match keywords, seems to rank high. Then Google shows the other ads under different relevant headings most like triggered by broad match keywords.
One of the challenges search engine marketers had been facing was that the only way they had to analyze, optimize and measure the success of an SEM campaign solely based on the last click conversion.
Even though considering the contribution of the last click conversion to the success of a campaign is important, ignoring the attribution of other keywords that have contributed to the search funnel, including the first click, can prevent you from seeing the full picture. This is due to the fact that people perform multiple searches before they make a decision and covert.
The attribution model was one of the reasons Microsoft introduced Search Funnels in Microsoft adCenter Labs when they tried to push MSN adCenter. This tool helps advertisers in visualizing and analyzing the customers’ search sequences. However, the shortcoming of this tool is that it is not specific to your campaign.
Google AdWords Search Funnel report helps search marketers make more informed decisions when it comes to bidding or deciding whether or not to keep a keyword in the account by giving you insight into the decision making process your customers go through before converting. Without knowing the attribution of a keyword to the conversion path, you might delete a keyword and hurt your overall performance.
Google AdWords Search Funnels include reports such as Top Conversions, Assisted Conversions, First Click Analysis, Last Click Analysis, Time Lag and Path Length. Here is an overview of Search Funnel Reports:
Google AdWords Search Funnels
In order for Google AdWords to show these reports, you need to have AdWords conversion tracking code in place or import goals from your Google Analytics to your Adwords account. Keep in mind that Search Funnels only show data from Google.com and only for those keywords that show up in at least one conversion path and for ad impressions and clicks within 30 days of the conversion.
