First-line optimizer teaches you how to do "search advertising" from 0 to 1

1: Why do information flow optimizers need to learn search advertising?

2. Tips for word selection and word segmentation in massive search ads

3: Analysis of Massive Search Advertising Examples

1. Why should information flow optimizers learn search advertising?

The "search ads" of Toutiao products are a huge traffic pool, no smaller than "information flow ads". And based on their product characteristics, the user quality of "search ads" is also relatively good.

Why do I say that?

The first point is that the volume of headline searches is very large. In November 2020, ByteDance’s search ads were fully launched, connecting ByteDance’s main products.

In addition, according to the "2020 Douyin Data Report" released by Douyin in January, Douyin's daily active users exceeded 600 million, and the average daily number of video "searches" has exceeded 400 million. A huge number of searches means huge advertising opportunities.

I started running Toutiao search ads in 2019. Before that, Toutiao search was not fully launched and the traffic was not very large, but after it was launched, the account traffic increased significantly.

Moreover, there has been a significant improvement in the quality of leads. In terms of customer acquisition, massive search advertising has now become an indispensable channel for advertisers to buy traffic.

The second point is that the effective cost is relatively low. Since searching is an active behavior of users, users have a stronger willingness and it is natural that the quality of users is good. Based on my personal actual investment, in terms of effective cost, the cost of search is much lower than that of information flow.

To sum up, based on the current situation, the development of "search advertising" is unstoppable, but there are still few optimizers who have mastered the skills of "search advertising". If you pay attention to it and learn it now, you may soon surpass those who only do "information flow advertising".

Having said so much, how do we do "search advertising"?

2. Tips for choosing and analyzing words in massive search ads

To obtain information, you need to search for the content you want, and to present the content, you need to use keywords.

Therefore, for advertisers, the words users search for represent their needs. If we can provide service for it, then we should put these words.

There are 4 ad slots on the search results page: the first and second positions and the second and third positions in the middle. Ad ranking is mainly affected by bid and quality.

Generally speaking, the higher the ad position, the better the effect, but this does not mean that the first place will necessarily be better than the second place. Therefore, what we need to pay attention to here is: find the right ranking instead of blindly grabbing the first place.

The advertising triggering mechanism is mainly affected by keyword matching mode and targeting. The wider the keyword matching pattern or the wider the targeting, the easier it is to trigger the ad and the higher the probability of display; the narrower the matching and targeting, the lower the probability of ad display.

In keyword placement, the core work consists of four parts: word selection, word segmentation, word rejection and word adjustment. Next, I will focus on the core work of keywords.

The picture shows a screenshot of the word segmentation tool

When placing search ads, the principle of word segmentation is to put words of the same category into one plan according to the consistency of part of speech. In the Toutiao search plan, you can include more keywords and don’t need to be as detailed as Baidu.

Here, let’s popularize the concept of “part of speech” in search ads. We know that any business has a lot of keywords. For the convenience of management, we need to position these words. This positioning is to sort out the parts of speech of the keywords.

The parts of speech of keywords can be divided into many types grammatically, such as noun, verb, adjective, adverb, etc. But in search advertising, we usually divide it according to conversion intent, into high-intent words, neutral words and general-intent words.

The high-intention words here refer to words with higher user consultation rates and transaction rates. Neutral words and general intention words refer to a category of words with relatively weak consultation and transaction.

For example, the most obvious industry in the part-of-speech classification is medical. The parts of speech with the highest intention in medical treatment are hospital words and cost words. Generally, users who search for these words have a very high intention to seek medical treatment, so they will be classified as high-intention words in delivery. When searching for words such as "cause" and "symptoms", users have a weak intention to seek medical treatment and in most cases just want to find out more, so they are classified as general intent words in the delivery.

Once you are familiar with your business terms, you can place your ads in a targeted manner. Use high-intent words to acquire high-quality customers, and use neutral words and general-intent words to expand the volume. In this way, we can achieve closing deals and attracting new customers at the same time.

Once you have found the words and understand how to segment them by part of speech, you can then segment the downloaded words by part of speech. After the words are divided and uploaded to the account, you need to set the matching mode and keyword bid.

There are currently three types of matches in Toutiao search: exact, phrase, and broad. It is recommended not to use exact. In the early stage, you can have a plan for phrase and a plan for broad. Or in one plan, you can set matches based on the length of the keywords, such as phrases for short words and broad for long-tail words. This is the initial matching method.

For keyword bidding, once you plan to set a conversion bid, you no longer need to set a keyword price. If the plan is to bid based on CPC click, keywords can set prices. However, currently search advertising is mainly based on smart bidding, so if you don’t bid according to CPC, there is no need to set the keyword price.

In terms of bidding, if you bid by click, it is cpc, if you bid by conversion, it is ocpm and ocpc

Negative words are the words you want to exclude. If you don’t want any search terms to come in, just deny them. Through negative words, we can improve the accuracy of traffic and reduce waste.

There are currently two types of negative words: exact negative words and phrase negative words.

Exact negation means that after you accurately negate the entire search term, this term will not be matched in the future, completely eliminating this term from matching. A phrase negation means that after you negate a part of the search term, all search terms containing this part will not be able to enter.

Phrase negation excludes a wider range of traffic than exact negation. Exact negation targets a single word or a single flow. Phrase negative word targets a group of words and a type of traffic.

Let me give you a specific example to illustrate this. Your business is "air conditioning repair". Suppose a keyword is set to broad match, and a search term "refrigerator repair" is matched. At this time, refrigerators and air conditioners have nothing to do with each other, so you need to deny the word "refrigerator" in the phrase, and no search terms with refrigerators will be allowed in the future. Suppose a search term "air conditioner replacement" is matched three or four times, and this search term is not relevant to your business. Then at this time, you can accurately negate this search term, and "air conditioner replacement" will never come in again.

There is a search term report in the background of Juliang, and you can make negative words based on the report. It can be set at both the group level and the plan level. Generally, negative words can be placed in the promotion group instead of the promotion plan. The frequency of negative words can be once every three days, not too frequent. Just eliminate some words that have nothing to do with your business, and keep the search words that are somewhat related.

Figure 2: Search term report

The picture shows the negative words of the promotion group, including short negative words and precise negative words

If the price is smart bidding, there is no need to adjust the price of keywords. If it is cpc bidding, you can flexibly adjust the keyword bid to achieve better ranking.

The starting and pausing are mainly adjusted according to your own budget and conversion situation.

Add, generally you can add a batch of words every half a month or a month.

Word deletion generally refers to deleting words with weak part-of-speech intentions, long-term no display, and long-term low quality.

The keyword adjustment is not particularly important. The important things are the first three points: word selection, word segmentation and negative words. We must grasp the priorities.