Upload Your Account Structure to Yahoo! and MSN Quickly and Easily

Creating a smart account structure helps keep your keywords organized, saves you time, and helps improve your quality scores with Google, Yahoo!, and MSN. If Google AdWords can see that your keywords are in highly targeted ad groups with well-written and highly targeted ad texts, you’ll likely get a great quality score, which helps you rank higher in Google but pay less.

Once you have developed this well-organized and optimized account structure, why do the work all over again for Yahoo! and MSN? It only makes sense to take all that hard work you put into Google and translate it into a well-organized and optimized Yahoo! and MSN PPC account too. You should take your Google account and literally upload it directly into Yahoo! and MSN with the same account structure. Doing this not only saves you time but also will keep all your campaigns and keywords organized throughout all three search engines for maximum organization.

Below are the best ways to upload your Google campaigns into Yahoo! and MSN with ease.

Yahoo!: Third-Party Converter Tool

What the Tool Does: The tool takes your Google .csv file and converts it into the correct format in order to upload it into Yahoo!

Where to Access the Tool: Click on the Campaigns tab in your Yahoo! account, then click on the Import feature under the tabs. Next to the Import Campaigns tab, click on the Convert Third-Party Campaigns tab.

How to Convert Your Google Campaigns Using the Yahoo! Tool:

1. If you haven’t already, download AdWords Editor in order to export a campaign out of Google. Make sure you export your Google campaign into a .csv file.
2. Go to the Convert Third-Party Campaigns tab in your Yahoo! account and upload your Google .csv file, give it a name, and click Convert.
3. It only takes a few minutes for Yahoo! to convert the file. Once your file is converted, it will show up in the Converted Campaigns history section.

Now all you have to do is navigate back to the Import Campaigns tab in your Yahoo! account and upload the new .csv file as you normally would.
It’s a great tool for quickly uploading a Google campaign into Yahoo! But you can also import your entire Google account into Yahoo! in the same way. Although this is a great tool that makes it super easy to upload into Yahoo!, there are a few things to keep in mind to prevent errors.

1. Delete negative keywords.

You can add negative keywords within Google in the Keywords tab of your ad group; however, you can’t do this in Yahoo! Therefore, you must remove all negative keywords from your spreadsheet before uploading it into Yahoo!

2. You cannot edit actual keywords in bulk form then upload them into Yahoo!

Yahoo! only allows you to delete and add keywords in your spreadsheet. You cannot modify an existing keyword then upload the file.

3. Fill in columns if adding ad text or additional keywords.

Before submitting your spreadsheet, be sure to copy down all campaign and ad group ID columns so Yahoo! knows which ad or keyword should be under which campaign and ad group.

4. Be sure start date is listed.

If you are uploading a brand-new spreadsheet into a new Yahoo! account, be sure to fill in the Yahoo! start date column before uploading your spreadsheet.

Types of Errors and How to Fix Them:

Error: “Can’t determine parent ad group or parent campaign.”
Fix: This means you haven’t copied all column data with your new additions. (See #3 above)
Error: “Cannot add keyword because it already exists within the campaign.”
Fix: While Google allows you to add singular and plural versions of your keywords separately, Yahoo! accepts both plural and singular forms as a single keyword. This is OK; you don’t have to do anything at this point. Yahoo! will kick out the duplicate keywords for you.

For MSN:

1. Download MSN’s template (in .csv format). You can acquire the template within the “Campaigns” section of your account. Just click on Import Campaigns and the template is available to download.
2. Enter your data into the spreadsheet (keywords, bids, ad texts, etc.).
3. Within the Import Campaigns tab, you can upload the .csv/Excel document into your account.

And it’s just that easy! Well, almost. Actually, when you don’t have any errors within your upload, this tool works very well. Here is a laundry list of things to watch for when you’re using this feature:

• Make sure to use MSN’s template and that your columns are in proper order. If you have any columns out of place, or if you’ve deleted any columns, your upload won’t work.
• Be sure to have every column populated (with one exception: the “keyword destination URL” column doesn’t need to be filled in).
• Don’t add negative keywords through the Import feature. Just add your negative keywords within the AdCenter interface.
• Use Internet Explorer to upload your .csv/Excel files, not FireFox (or any other Web browser).
• The new campaigns you import will be set geographically to “Entire Network.” Unless you want to target every country in the MSN AdCenter network (and there are a lot of them), you’ll want to edit this option to target the countries that are appropriate for your campaign.

All in all, MSN AdCenter’s import feature works well once you know the little things that can trip you up. These tips should help you upload information faster and with fewer headaches.