Part IV: Marketing your Website - Paying for High Ranking

Search Engine Optimization - PPC Campaigns

by Pauline Sugarman

Created July 2004; Revised January 2006

As discussed in Search Engine Pay for Placement Overview - To Pay or Not to Pay, PPC campaigns can be a good addition to your search engine marketing endeavors. They ensure your placement at the top of a search result, helping you to be “seen” for key words phrases that you find are too competitive or too much work for your “natural” search engine optimizing efforts.

There are more Search Engine players than Google and Yahoo, but since they are the most important search engines we will focus in this article on their PPC programs.

Google Search Engine

Google is the only top search engine that continues to allow you to submit a website free of charge; you do not have to pay to be included. There’s no guarantee where you’ll end up in terms of ranking, but it is free.

But, for those of you that want more control over your placement, you can participate in Google’s PPC services.

Google AdWords

Google’s AdWords appear as ads on the top right hand corner of every search result page on Google and also on AOL. Google charges a $5 activation fee. $25 ought to last you at least a month. Your position is determined by your bid PLUS the relevancy of the words in your ad PLUS your click through rate.

Generally, you should be able to see in a month or so if your AdWords campaign is worth the money. If you are not making money try tweaking your ads or ending the campaign.

Relevancy, how relevant your ad is to the search completed, is an important part of the formula for getting the best spot when it comes to Google’s Ad Words.

You can set different minimum bids for different keywords all in one Google AdWords campaign.

To place a Google AdWords bid for a keyword, go to: https://adwords.google.com/select.

Yahoo!

Unlike Google, Yahoo pretty much charges for everything, whether it’s getting accepted into its Directory, into its new Search engine or for its Overture Sponsored Listings. They have a “Free Listing” service but it is reserved for a very few non-profit websites of their choice.

Yahoo Search Engine - Site Match

This is their new search engine feature which also services Alta Vista, and AlltheWeb. Yahoo may find you on their own (especially if you have done all your search engine optimizing and have a good link campaign) without your having to buy your way into their search engine, but if you feel it is urgent to get a listing or are in need of the link popularity it provides, you may want to fork over the money.

It will cost you $40 for the first URL, $29 for the second through tenth URL and $10 per URL thereafter. On top of the inclusion fee, you will also have to pay (and here’s the kick) $.15 - $.30 per click charge when a visitor clicks to your site from any Yahoo owned portal. This will add up quickly.

Again, don’t do it if you are already indexed by Yahoo!

Yahoo’s Overture (PPC) Ad Services

In July 2003 Yahoo purchased Overture, the original Pay per Click company. It’s most popular PPC service is the Sponsored Listings, which show up above the Yahoo’s regular listings as well as on MSN and Ask Jeeves.

Yahoo Sponsored Listings
People bid on the terms. An account requires $50 deposit, and you must spend a minimum of $20/month. New listings can take 1-2 days to be approved. To sign up go to: http://www.overture.com/d/about/advertisers/. Recommended that you disable auto-bidding on all search terms and do not set higher maximum bid that you are willing to pay for every click. Also look at the bid prices below the position you want using the BidRank tool.

Yahoo Ambassador Program
If you are willing to spend at least $5,000 a month, Overture offers additional services including your own rep account to help you manage your campaigns. And will even put together an entire PPC proposal for you.

While this is not, by any means, an exhaustive article on PPC campaigns, it should give you an idea of what is entails in a PPC campaign. If you wish to learn more about PPC I would recommend reading Andrew Goodmans' “21 Ways to Maximize Your Google AdWords Campaign”. For Overture I would suggest checking out the Overture Forum at: http://forums.seochat.com

Next, we will review the importance of submitting to quality Directories on the web...

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