Yahoo! Quality Score Tips

Much has been said in the forums and such regarding the new Yahoo! Quality Score. Want to increase your Quality Score, outrank your competitors and pay less? That’s easy, follow this advice from Yahoo!Sarah:

Remember that more than click-through rate influences the quality of an ad. The quality of an ad is determined relative to other ads displayed at the same time. Expected performance and historical performance is analyzed but she didn’t say how “expected performance” was measured. Historical performance data was not purged on February 5, but as time passes, the data generated after the launch of the new ranking model will have the strongest influence on ad quality calculations.

The time it takes to take both expected and historical performance into account to measure ad quality depends on the volume of searches related to a keyword. Keywords with lots of daily searches often generate enough data in a relatively short period of time until historical performance is a stronger factor for ad quality within that marketplace.

And no, the data used to determine ad quality is not “purged” at the beginning of a new month. Again, no information was given as to how long the historical data is kept. Essentially, what this means for you is nothing. Yahoo! seems to be giving information, when in reality they are not. Stating that they are going by historical data, but not giving ranges of when the historical data is purged is useless to a business owner.

Here’s some more info on Yahoo Search Marketing’s Quality Ranking Score:

Yahoo Search Marketing’s ‘Quality Index Ranking’ may look at these factors as being the most important (note the all important word “may” in the text):

* Bid or Click Price
* Historical click-through data
* Conversion data
* Organic Rankings of the said Advertiser URL (will a high organic ranking give an increase or decrease?)
* Whether the query word/phrase appears in the title
* Keyword in URL
* Keywords on Landing Page
* Possibly other Keyphrases in Campaign
* Comparison between other sites advertising for keyterm

Here are some methods which could better your ranking within Yahoo Search Marketing Sponsored Listings:

1. Call to Action in Active Ad Copy
2. Compelling Title Tag
3. Geotargeted Advertising
4. Use of Searched Keyword in Ad Copy
5. Use of A/B Split Ad Copy Testing to See Which Works Better
6. Try Dayparting : Running More or Less Ads During Certain Part of the Day
7. Test Landing Pages : Run With the Higher Converting Ones
8. Inclusion of Text Based Keyphrases on Landing Page
9. Use Keywords in Landing Page URL
10. Use of a recognizeable domain

Once again Yahoo! disappoints in giving their customers information that is helful and useful. We are just left with generalities and really no new concrete information than we had before this was released.