Driving relevant traffic to your website is the most important aspect of PPC management. This means having a very specific set of keywords. However, being more specific with your keyword targeting will lower the overall volume of traffic you can expect to receive. This may lead to missed opportunities and underachievement. Advertising on search engines such as Google enables you to target the customer as they are shopping, which is the perfect time to be capturing their attention. However, if the goal is to attract as many visitors as possible, this will not be enough. Google studies show that 5% of all internet pages viewed are search screens, so how do you make the most of the other 95%?
This is where Site Targeting comes in. Your ads are shown on the websites of search partners. These are affiliates or companies owned by the search engine. For example, Google has YouTube as a search partner. As long as you have ‘Show my ads’ on ‘Search Partners’ ticked in the Campaign Settings menu, your ads will be shown on these partner sites as well as Googles search lists. This opens up your ads to a huge market with lots of potential new customers. However, it also brings risk in the form of irrelevant traffic. Rather than target people as they shop, you are targeting them whilst they are involved in another activity.
Traffic from search partners must be checked and cleaned regularly to ensure it is delivering the right people to your website. You may feel that a certain site is not delivering any valid traffic, but at the moment there is no way to block certain sites from Googles search partners. Its all or nothing.
There is a tool available to help make Yahoo PPC management much more manageable. Something that would be very valuable for Google to develop. Yahoo Site Targeting allows you to block certain sites from showing your adverts. You can enter up to 250 different URLs for sites and/or pages that you want to restrict. You can block sites in three ways:
- Block the entire domain – for example, cuddlydonkeys.com
- Block a sub domain of the site – for example, toys.cuddleydonkeys.com
- Block individual pages – for example, cuddlydonkeys.com/braying-donkey-toys
So now is the time for Google to create a similar tool and allow us to filter our search partner traffic. A combination of adverts on search lists and relevant search partner sites is the best way to maximise the potential of your Yahoo PPC management campaign.
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