Pay-Per-Click-Thru Search Engines
Typical search engines such as Infoseek, AltaVista, Hotbot and Excite
send a robot or spider to analyze your web site and rank the pages
spidered according to their mysterious relevancy algorithms.
This makes it difficult and frustrating to get your web site
into the top listings for specific keywords and keyword phrases
on these search engines.
Pay-per-click-thru search engines provide one of the best opportunities to
drive traffic to your website without all the headaches and
frustrations of trying to get listed on the traditional search
engines.
Pay-per-click-thru search engines basically work by having people bid
for the top positions for certain keywords and keyword phrases.
Simply put, if you outbid
someone else for the keyword "bulldozers", then your web site will
appear first whenever a user types in the word "bulldozers" into
the search engine's search form.
The reason why you might list your site on these pay-per-click-thru search
engines is that you can target the visitors that you want to visit your
web site based upon the keywords or keyword phrases that
you think your prime visitor might type into a search engine form.
Since you will be paying for each time someone clicks on your link,
you will want to make sure that you have the right keywords or
keyword phrases selected so as to not attract the wrong type of visitors
(those that most likely have no desire to visit your site or purchase
anything you intend to sell).
You can determine what the highest bids are for your keywords or
keyword phrases by doing a search using these keywords or keyword phrases
on a pay-per-click=thru search engine.
The returned listings will display the
dollar amounts at the end of each URL listed
telling how much was bid to secure that ranking.
Naturally the higher bidder will have the highest ranking. If there
are no dollar amounts it means that, to date, no one has bid for those
keywords or keyword phrases.
Choose the keywords or keyword phrases that are most relevant to
your web site. Think about your prime customer and the keywords or
keyword phrases that they would most likely use to find a site
like yours. Then, only bid on those keywords or keyword phrases
that are truly relevant.
Irrelevant keywords or keyword phrases could result in unknown numbers
of visitors to your web site that are not interested in your
web site's content. You've thus wasted your money on each click-thru
to your site by these visitors.
Create a content-rich title and description so that the visitor knows
exactly what to expect when they click on your link.
Statistics indicate that including
the keyword or keyword phrase in your title or description can
increase your click-through ratio because the potential visitor
has visual belief in the accuracy of the site's potential to
satisfy his or her search request.
You are bringing pre-qualified traffic to your site when using
properly relevant keywords and keyword phrases.
Remember, you are paying for every click-thru, so every penny counts.
The price you bid depends very much on the profit margin of you
product and your clickthru-to-sales ratio. For example, if you have a
service or product that has a profit margin of $5 and your
clickthru-to-sales ratio is 50:1
(i.e. for every 50 visitors, you make 1 sale),
then the maximum you should bid to break even is 10 cents
($5.00/50 = 10 cents).
Anything more than this and you will be losing money.
Most of the pay-per-click-thru search engines are easy to sign up with.
You can set up an account online for as low as a $25.00 deposit.
Most pay-per-click-thru search engines provide good
reporting features that allow you to analyze the traffic to your web
site and to determine which keywords and keyword phrases lef them to your
site.
Here are some of the more popular Pay-Per-Click-Thru Search Engines.
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