June 24, 2008

Yahoo Smart Start Cover If you have ever wanted to pull your hair out over Yahoo's Search Marketing interface--I definitely have--than you know that the interface is not nearly as user-friendly as Google's. For those of you looking for a quick, go-to guide, I have just the one for you: Yahoo Smart Start.

Although Yahoo's blog claims that Yahoo Smart Start is a guide for beginners, I would say that the guide is definitely geared more to those who have some experience with pay-per-click advertising but are not experts. However, the guide would be extremely helpful to show to clients who were curious about the yahoo interface and wanted to understand what they were really getting into with advertising on Yahoo.

The book walks you through the ten helpful chapters below.

Building a Foundation with Strong Keywords
Organizing Ad Groups for Success
Writing Effective Ads
Making Sure Your Ads are High Quality
Matching Your Keywords to Your Customer's Searches
Determining Effective Bids
Targeting Your Ads Geographically
Advertising on Content Sites
Tracking Your Results

Each chapter begins with an opening question from Sharon Goodsense, a character PPC advertiser, such as, "I'm lost on the match type thing. I see there are two options, but I don't understand why I would ever want to use the Standard match type, when the Advanced match type shows my ad for more searches on my keywords. Shouldn't I just always use that option (Yahoo Smart Start 41)?"

Questions like this are ones that I definitely asked myself when I began advertising on Yahoo, so I think the book reaches out well to its target audience and addresses common concerns of new and experienced advertisers in an easy and understandable way.

There is also a handy bulleted list of what that chapter covers making answers to your questions very easy to find. The best part about the guide is that advertisers like myself can use it as a quick reference, say if you forget where to add excluded keywords or where to set daily budgets. There is even a troubleshooting guide at the end that provides a great, quick reference especially since many of Yahoo's features are hidden multiple clicks away in the interface and are easy to forget how to navigate to.

I also liked the way that the book not only walks you through the process of setting up an account, but it also provides examples of what to do when organizing an account and more importantly examples of what not to do, such as the type of ads that won't pass Yahoo's review system.

So go print out the manual, whether you are a new or experienced advertiser, keep it on your desk, and it will most likely answer your question without having to make a phone call to Yahoo. If you know the answers already, you will at least pick up a few helpful advertising tips, and in the land of PPC advertising, a few helpful tips could end up making you more money.

We've recorded a few more AdWords strategies and posted a six-minute video to help you get better results with your online advertising.