Search Engine Marketing Pros

In my previous post, Yahoo! Search Marketing Standard & Advanced Match Types, I talked about how each match types works and what to lookout for when using them in your account. But what if I use both the Advanced Match Type and Standard Match Type of the same keyword together in the same account?

Good question and this is what I’m going to talk about today.

When running PPC campaigns in Google AdWords, it is common practise to have different match types of the same keyword in the same account, so it’s logical for advertisers to bring this strategy to Yahoo and hoping that what works for Google would also work in Yahoo.

Unfortunately, Yahoo Search Marketing works in a different manner. Having different match types of the same keywords under the same account will not just only be a waste of time and effort, but it might actually hurt your account performance.  Let me explain why.

Since Yahoo doesn’t allow having duplicated keywords in the same ad group (you’ll get the “keyword was not added because it is already covered by another keyword in the ad group” message) even when they are in different match types, the only way to have different match types of the same keyword running under the same account is to have them in different campaigns or ad groups. As a result, you will need to have a set of ad for each match type of the same keyword.  When both match types of the same keyword are presented in the same account, Yahoo runs the one that has better ad Quality Index.

For example:

You are an advertiser mainly selling “tennis shoes” but you also sell tennis shoes related products. You might want to bid high for the Standard Match of the keyword “tennis shoes” to get more qualified traffic, but you also want to bid low for the Advanced Match of the same keyword to target other related search queries. Assuming the ad for the advanced match version of the keyword has a quality index of 4, and the ad for the standard match has a quality index of 3.

Let’s say someone searches for “tennis shoes polisher”, as expected, the advanced match version of the keyword is triggered and your ad is shown. No problem here.

Now, let’s say someone searches exactly for “tennis shoes”. In this case, the ad for the advanced match version of the keyword will still be shown because the ad has higher quality index, even though you obviously want to have the standard match type of the keyword to be triggered because it will be in higher position and the associated ad is more relevant.

Is there any way to work around this? Not that I know of. So this sort of goes back to the conclusion of my previous post: Stay away from advanced match in Yahoo as much as you can, and build an exhaustive keyword list using standard match.

Pitstop Media is a Vancouver based search engine marketing company which offers results oriented PPC services. If you need help with pay per click management and optimization please contact us for a free, no obligation quote. We’ve helped companies reduce their paid advertising cost by as much as 148% and increase AdWords conversion rates by as much as 410%.

Related posts:

1. Yahoo! Search Marketing Standard & Advanced Match Types
2. PPC Keyword Match Types
3. Yahoo Updates its Search Marketing Platform
4. Yahoo Search Marketing Interface Reporting Delay
5. A Powerful Google Adwords – Google Analytics Combo