Keyword Overlap Strategy

A double-serving issue can result when you are bidding on the same keywords for the same website, within multiple campaigns. You’ll have keyword overlapping from multiple campaigns…and a keyword overlap strategy is needed. This is a sophisticated PPC strategy.

Here’s a hypothetical scenerio: Imagine a Google account structure that has a My Client Center (MCC) with 2 accounts. And, each account has the same campaign/keywords. Hence, keyword overlap. And to further complicate things, you have the need for the daily budget in each account to be used in full.

You might be wondering why structure an account like this in the first place. Imagine a situation where an organization has separate budgets ( or departments) with the same objectives ( or conversion points/ landing pages) . Your purpose for this type of account structure is the need to separate out the reporting for each account/department, and to use each budget. In this scenerio you’d have two separate initiatives with distinct budget lines. Each department would be bidding on the same keywords.

Google doesn’t allow an advertiser to serve an ad from each account at the same time. That’s double-serving. So, you have a double-serving issue, and a need for a Keyword Overlap Strategy.

This double-serving issue is particularly dangerous with Yahoo & MSN.

Here’s why:
Yahoo will delete the listings. But, you’ll be able to see the reason in the editorial status section of your account. It’s basically survival of the fittest on Yahoo.
MSN will de-dupe your listings by purging one of the ads/keywords without giving you ANY notice. Yikes!

Keyword Overlap Strategy solutions:
Strategy #1 is to just carefully watch the performance of each account/campaign, and optimize bids continuously. This is a manually intensive effort. Only really works on Google. But, there is a danger of low quality score, low impressions, and inactivated keywords. Depending on the size of the account, this might not be very practical.

Strategy #2 is to closely monitor the keyword performance & cost, and shift keywords from one account into the other in order to use each campaign’s budget. Kinda like a tennis match. You’d be pushing the the keyword from one account into the other. Watch the keyword cost, once it gets to a certain level, push it back to the other account. Back and forth until one or both of the campaigns end.

Strategy #3: On MSN , Looksmart, & ASK it’s based on the Display URL. So, if you add the directory structure to the display url, then you can circumvent the issue of keyword overlapping. However, Google’s double-serving policy is based on the root url – so appending in this manner will not help. There is really no way to circumvent their policy – the campaigns will need to compete against each other, and only one will serve on any given search.

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