18-Dec-2006 Marty Weintraub
My First 6 Yahoo Panama “Enhancement” Requests |
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Custom URL Management |
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Instead, it’s nearly impossible to deal with more then a few keywords at a time in Panama in assigning custom URL strings. Does Yahoo WANT us to use irrelevant landing pages so we spend more money? If not, they sure provide a lot of incentive to use a single URL for every keyword in an ad group. It is often important to assign a Custom URL to every individual keyword. For instance, consider the following URL example: www.myDomain.com/trackingScript.php?keyword=theKeyword&redirect=customLandingPage).
Public Social Media Responsability
Panama Geo-Targeting Pain
Information Request Marketing
Keyword Research 101
3 Tips for Effective Landing Pages
aimClear • 525 South Lake Avenue
Duluth, Minnesota • 312 Washington Ave. North • Minneapolis, MN 55401 • 218-310-2244
Panama Geo-Targeting Pain: AimClear is a search engine optimization (SEO) Internet marketing firm in Minneapolis and Duluth offering Website Promotion and Minnesota Internet marketing strategy nationally.
This URL structure allows marketing pros to redirect clicks to content specific landing pages and track the PPC purchases from the incoming URL string. I need a different combination of variables available for every keyword.
Unfortunately Panama places custom URL assignment management deep down at the individual keyword level with no mechanism to edit groups of URLS. You have to drill down to the individual keyword level for every keyword’s custom URL one at a time. Google on the other hand, at the keyword level, allows you to select as many keywords as you want with check boxes to create/edit custom URL’s for batches of keywords-complete with a javascript copy-down feature.
Date Range Selection Needs an “All Time” Feature
Let’s face it; the Google app is awesome when it comes to keeping track of your clients’ money (and spending it too :-) Having access to an “all time” date range preset proves extremely useful in plotting the ROI of PPC in Google. Panama gives you preset date ranges to choose from but excludes the “all time” option.
Key Features Unavailable When Setting Up Campaigns
A frustrating problem is lack of keyword list cleaning features on account-setup. If you add the keywords “binocular” and “binoculars” once the campaign is already set up Panama will automatically clean out the either the plural or singular and inform you of the redundancy.
However, if (when you first set up a campaign) you enter singular and plural or certain inversions (Hollywood Hotel/Hotel Hollywood) an error message is generated instructing you to delete certain permutations from the form field by hand. This may not sound like a big deal but keep in mind that other search engines don’t’ assume keyword permutations like Yahoo. In Google “Divorce Mediator Minnesota” is a different query that “Divorce Mediators Minnesota.”
Therefore I often deal with keyword research lists which need special cleaning for Panama. Overture was the same way and was good about removing permutations perceived as duplicates. As I deal with hundreds of keywords, picking through the Panama error messages and cleaning the list by hand on initial set-up sucks. The work-around is to set up campaigns with a single keyword and add the rest afterwards to take advantage of Panama’s automatic keyword cleaning which becomes available the first time you add new keywords after the campaign is initially configured.
Default Settings Are Expensive
“Panama defaults keywords to “Advanced Match.” Advanced match automatically does keyword research for you on the fly and assigns searches which, in Panama’s estimation, are reasonably associated with your specified keywords. Sometimes this is desirable but I like to know the keywords I am buying to avoid expensive mistakes. To the professional this can cause wasted time and consternation figuring out where dollars are being spent. To the less savvy advertiser “advanced match” without a full understanding of what it means can turn into an incredible waste of money.
Panama defaults Content Match to on. Content match, in the hands of the uninformed can be an expensive mistake. I don’t understand Yahoo’s thinking. I’m sure a certain percentage of newbie advertisers will blow a lot of short-term cash on ill-advised content match, get discouraged, and abandon the PPC channel. Content match, while useful when wielded properly, is also the source of arbitrage scourge for those who leach PPC commissions with no-value content match only sites.
The Standard Match/Advanced Match and Content Match Hierarchal Layers are Confusing
There are options for standard verses advanced match on 4 different levels; administrative, campaign, ad group, and individual keyword. Content match on/ff is enabled on 3 different levels. higher level trumps the level below (Best I can figure).
I called Yahoo Customer Support to clarify this today and the person I talked to informed me that the opposite was true…until I read him Panama’s error message when trying to set a keyword to advanced match while standard was selected at the administrative level. It’s so confusing that street level Yahoo tech support could not explain it. There must be a better way.
Client Center
There is none. I have a number of clients with Panama accounts. Some clients own multiple web businesses. I have a list of usernames and passwords 2 pages long. Log in...sign out...login...check the password list. Yahoo tech support explained to me that "after the conversion is complete" we'll be able to ask for "custom aggregation" of our clients' accounts.
Google seems years ahead with their killer-app PPC client center, complete with layers of approval and oversight.
