Yahoo and MSN/Bing announced this week that you will now see “Powered by Bing” at the bottom of search results on Yahoo.  What we have been hearing since the initial announcement of the Search Alliance is finally coming to fruition; organic search results in Yahoo are now based on Bing’s index and algorithm.  If you have been hesitant to bid on keywords you already ranked well for in Yahoo, now might be a good time to rethink that strategy.  The fact is, most websites ranked differently in the two engines prior to the partnership and now that difference can directly affect your site’s performance and your company’s bottom line.

One strategy I believe is very relevant today, given the Yahoo-Bing search partnership, is leveraging the keywords from organic traffic and adding those keywords to your PPC campaign.  This approach takes on greater significance if your website historically ranked well in Yahoo, and not so well in MSN/Bing.  If you haven’t seen it yet, you soon will see a major change in traffic to your site based on how well your site is ranked by Bing’s index. You can offset the loss of traffic from Yahoo’s organic rankings by adding the keywords you ranked well for into your PPC campaigns.

Hopefully you employ an analytics tool to analyze and identify sources of traffic and the keywords that drive people to your site.  Google Analytics (GA) is an excellent choice given its wide array of features and cost (it’s free!).  It is imperative you bridge the gap between Yahoo and MSN/Bing for any terms you held strong organic positions in Yahoo, but lack under the Bing index.  The quickest way to accomplish this is to incorporate those terms into your PPC campaign.  In this way, you can maintain a strong presence for search queries in Yahoo even if your organic rankings are buried by Bing’s algorithm, while you work to improve your organic presence.

When running a Pay-per-Click campaign (PPC), using keyword insertion is a solid strategy to help your click-through rates.  As explained by Google, “Keyword insertion is an advanced feature that can help make your ad more relevant to a diverse audience. To use keyword insertion, you place a short piece of code into your ad text. Each time the ad shows, AdWords will automatically replace the code with the keyword that triggered the ad.”  Keep in mind, the character limit for ad headlines in Google AdWords is 25 characters, including spaces.  When you use keyword insertion, you must choose a “back-up” or default keyword for the headline in case the search term that triggers your ad is over the character limit.  It is fairly easy to set up, but you must be careful where you choose to implement the strategy.  It is not something that should be used across the board in all campaigns.

Because the search engines replace your default headline with the exact search query used to trigger your ad, you need to be cognizant of when misspellings are acceptable.  For example, if you are running a Branding campaign, it would not be wise to employ keyword insertion for ads associated with your business name.  The main idea behind keyword insertion is to create a stronger connection between your ad and the search term that triggers your ad by replacing your default headline with the search query.  However, you should protect your brand by keeping the correct spelling of your business name even if the searcher made a typo.  Instead of keyword insertion, you are better served by bidding on any common misspellings of your brand or business name and keep the correct spelling in your ad.

In addition, you would not want to use keyword insertion for ads associated with competitor’s brand names.  There are convincing reasons to bid on competitor business names, but you must be aware of Google’s trademark guidelines.  For example, Google does not allow for trademarked terms to be used in ad headlines.  If you mistakenly use keyword insertion on ads in a competitor campaign, you will quickly see those ads disapproved by the search engines. 

Keyword insertion is a fine strategy when applied to ad copy that focuses on your core products or services, outside of Branding and Competitor keywords.  Be mindful of this when creating ads and using keyword insertion, because there are times when you will not want to replace your headline with one dictated by the search query.

If you are running a Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaign with Google AdWords and you sell products through your website, incorporating Google Base in your marketing mix is a wise decision.  For one thing, Google does not charge a fee to submit your products and the visitors you attract from your Google Base listings within the organic search results are not based on a PPC model, in other words, free traffic!  When doing a search on Google, you can easily see the Google Base listings, also known as “Shopping Results”, within the organic search results in the middle of the page.

However, when you have active AdWords and Google Base accounts, the advantage of synching your accounts is that within the Sponsored Links section, you have the opportunity to have an image associated with your PPC ad (see screenshot below).  This can provide an excellent competitive advantage by “pushing down” all other ads on the right hand side of the search results page to accommodate your product image.  Unlike the Google Base “shopping results” within the natural listings, you do pay for clicks since it is technically your PPC ad, but your cost-per-click (CPC) rates are not any higher than a regular text ad.  You get the benefit of added real estate on the page for your sponsored ad, providing more information about your product and showing an image, all without having to pay additional CPC rates.

It is important to set up an optimized feed within the Google Base account and provide as much detail as possible about your products.  Simply supplying the minimum information needed to participate in the Google Base program will not ensure your PPC ads are accompanied by information from your Google Base feed.  Google has a list of required “attributes” for the minimum information required for a data feed to be approved.  In addition, there are “recommended” and “optional” attributes that can enhance and optimize your feed.  To give your PPC ads the best chance to display your Google Base product information (specifically an image and price) you should create a data feed that incorporates all of the required and recommended attributes.  Do not stop there, however, and also include as many of the optional product attributes as you can so your Google Base data feed is fully optimized.