Get Better Results from YSM Ad Campaigns

Yahoo Search Marketing (YSM) is a pay-per-click (PPC) advertising platform similar to Google Ads or Bing Ads.

As with Google, the position of your PPC ad is dependent on both your bid and your Quality Score, which is based on the ad’s click-through rate (CTR) and the relevance of the ad to the keyword and the landing page it sends users to.

Yahoo Search Marketing Best Practices

To obtain a high YSM Quality Score—which means you pay less for more impressions and better ad positioning—and see strong returns on your online advertising investment, it’s a good idea to follow the PPC best practices that apply to all SEM ad platforms:

• Create small, focused ad groups to ensure relevancy between ads, keywords and landing pages.


• Don’t get into bidding wars for highly competitive, broad terms. More specific keywords will cost you less and garner more targeted, qualified traffic.


• Do keyword research to find your best keywords.


• Use the keyword you’re bidding on in the ad text—Yahoo will bold the keyword to show searchers that the ad is relevant.


• Use excluded or negative keywords. By eliminating keywords that don’t fit your target audience, you can increase CTR and reduce wasteful PPC spending.


• Send users to a relevant, optimized landing page. Don’t just use your home page as the destination URL, and consider creating a dedicated landing page to increase conversions.


• Create multiple ads—at least two per ad group. YSM will automatically rotate the ads and you’ll be able to see which version performs best.

In addition, you should be aware of a few differences between Yahoo Search Marketing and other paid search marketing platforms:

• Typically, Yahoo Search Marketing favors “standard match” over “advanced match” options; in other words, if you bid on the exact match of a keyword, your ad may appear above a broad match ad even if that advertiser had a higher bid.


• YSM offers a “local match” option, allowing businesses to target online local advertising ads near their physical address.

Get More Help with Paid Search Marketing

Learn how to do paid search marketing the right way with our free learning resource, PPC University.