Search Engine Marketing Strategies
Pay Per Click Advertising
Pay Per Click (PPC) advertisements are priced on a per-click basis. This means that you pay a small amount each time somebody clicks on the advertisement and visits your site, instead of paying each time the ad is shown. Done properly, this can be an effective way of driving highly-targeted traffic to your site.
Overture
Overture (formerly GoTo) invented the concept of PPC search engine listings. They have partnered with a large number of search engines and portals, which display Overture ads above regular search results. Current Overture partners include Yahoo, AltaVista, MSN, Lycos, and Ask Jeeves. It used to include AOL, but Google recently took over that contract. Still, their reach is the widest of the PPC search engines.
Overture's listings work like an auction. You bid on keyword phrases based on how much you think the traffic is worth per visit. Other companies can bid on the same terms, and outbid you if they want. The top three bids are displayed much more prominently than the other listings.
The key to a successful Overture campaign is find keywords with good cost/click ratios. There are often good deals to be found by doing a little research.
Overture has $20.00 monthly minimum spend, and they charge $50.00 to open an account. Because the investment is fairly low, we recommend trying Overture for at least one keyword, and watching the results.
Google Adwords Select
Google's PPC ad program is called Adwords Select. Google's ads are displayed in colored boxes in the right-hand column next to their search results. Google uses the ad's relevancy rating, in conjunction with your bid, to determine placement. This means that you could conceivably be paying less per click than another ad, but still be displayed in a higher position.
Adwords has some nice features, as compared to Overture. First of all, the ads are displayed on Google, which is the number one search engine on the web. They are also displayed on AOL Search, which exposes your ad to a large amount of traffic that might not be using Google yet. Also, there's no waiting for your ad to go live with Adwords — it's a self-serve process.
Another nice feature is that it will automatically adjust your bid so you pay the lowest price necessary to maintain your position. You can also very easily test the effectiveness of different wording, because Google allows you to create multiple ads per campaign.
The only downside to Google's insistence on relevancy is that they will restrict or drop your ad altogether if it drops below a certain click-through percentage.
Adwords Select only costs $5.00 to get started. We highly recommend this program to clients, second only to being listed on Yahoo.
