Pay For Performance Search Engine & Directory Services
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These days, most search engines and directories have a Pay For Performance (PFP) or Pay Per Click (PPC) element to them. These paid services are a way of promoting your site by paying for the extra exposure, rather than relying solely on your site's search engine ranking as determined by the search engine compatibility of your site design. The extra exposure can include having your site listed above the normal search listings under "sponsored matches" or "featured listings", or via specially designed text ads that display when your target keywords or phrases are searched on. For companies that don't have search engine compatible sites, or that don't have the time or budget to implement a traditional search engine optimization campaign to obtain high rankings, PPC and PPC options can be a good solution to increasing site traffic, quickly. These options are also an excellent choice when used in combination with a search engine optimization campaign to achieve maximum exposure and larger traffic volumes. Below is an outline of the most popular Pay For Performance models: Google AdWords - Pay Per Click Looksmart LookListings Small Business - Pay Per Click
If you plan on using pay per click advertising services, consider investing in pay per click bid management software to help manage your PPC campaigns.
Overture
Pay Per Click (Recommended) If
you create a keyword campaign on Overture (previously known as GoTo) and you
buy their "premium listings" (positions 1, 2 or 3) for particular
keywords or search phrases, your bid buys you top listings on Overture's
partner sites (Yahoo, MSN, AOL, Lycos, Infospace, HotBot & Netscape).
Listings
would be monitored by Web Rank, using approved software to ensure bid amounts
were consistent to attain target positions without going over budget. Volume
levels are determined by your budget, as you only pay for the traffic
delivered. Features:
How
much you pay depends on the keyword or phrase you are bidding on and what
position you want to purchase. Each
account has a USD 20 minimum monthly spend and there is a USD 50 deposit
required to open the account (gets credited towards your keyword bids). There
is a minimum bid requirement of USD 0.05 per click through. You pay the bid
price EACH TIME somebody clicks through to your site from the Overture and
partner listings. With
the large traffic numbers driven to your site via Premium Listings, the
costs of keyword bid campaigns can quickly add up, so we highly recommend
deciding on a total budget so that we can develop a cost effective keyword bid
allocation and maintenance plan combining both premium and classic listings.
We strongly recommend a minimum keyword spend of USD 300 per month to achieve
the best results. Monthly reports would be provided to help you track the
performance of the PPC campaign and traffic generated. Cost: Click Here for Our Overture Pay Per Click Pricing More Info: www.overture.com (choose the Pay For Performance link). [Web
Rank have used Overture for our own web sites and client sites with mixed
results. While the traffic for popular terms is very high with Premium
listings, the click thru's can quickly add up, costing a lot of money per
month. Choosing cheaper keywords and phrases that are still commonly searched
on is the best strategy. Web Rank recommends that if you are thinking of using
Overture, establish a short term keyword campaign and conduct thorough
research using WordTracker
or a similar keyword research tool beforehand to see which terms are the most
popular but the cheapest (most cost effective overall)].
Google
AdWords Pay Per Click (Recommended) AdWords
Select combines all the features of AdWords with cost-per-click (CPC) pricing.
With
cost-per-click (CPC) pricing, you pay only when a customer clicks on your ad,
regardless of how many times it's shown. Google
adjusts your bids automatically to keep you ahead of your competition at the
lowest possible price. Like
AdWords, Google AdWords Select gives web site owners the ability to
promote their site when particular keyword or key phrase searches are
conducted at Google. Your ads appear on the right side of results pages in a
green “call out” box under the heading “Sponsored Links”. Your AdWords
text ads appear on search result pages for the keywords you buy, and can be
targeted by language and country. So, to reach collectors of tin toys you
might buy the keywords "toy collector," "tin toys," etc. Unlike
AdWords, the pricing of Adwords Select is based on the amount you are prepared
to bid for your keyword or phrase and the overall cost is determined by the
number of click-thru’s your ad achieves (regardless of the number of
impressions served). Google positions your ad based on how many users click on
it over time. Google
will automatically disable any keywords with less than 0.5% click-thru rates.
Web Rank would take your list of preferred search terms and create a range of
text ads to promote your site with. Over time, only the most successful ads
would be retained (those with the highest click-thru rate). Cost: Click Here for Our Google AdWords Pay Per Click Pricing More Info: https://adwords.google.com [Web
Rank have used Google AdWords Select for our own web sites and client sites
with good results. Because your ad is shown every time there is a matching
search, but you only pay when someone clicks your ad, you achieve a lot of
“free” impressions. By being constantly associated with certain search
terms, this type of campaign can cost-effectively contribute to your site’s
branding power. In our opinion, it is well worth giving Google AdWords Select
a try].
Looksmart
LookListings Small Business (Not Recommended) Looksmart.com have taken the recent and highly criticized step of transforming themselves from a Paid Directory model to a Pay For Performance model, removing their Express Submit directory submission service in the process. You now must pay a set up fee and pay again when visitors click on your listing, rather than pay for once for a site review when submitting your site. The "relevancy keywords", title and description chosen during the set up of your listing now determine when your site appears for searches. There is no free submission option to Looksmart and the only way to get your site into their directory is to either pay for their Small Business Listings or submit your site via the Zeal directory (for non-profit sites only). Currently, these changes apply to Looksmart.com only, not regional directory versions. Important: Existing Looksmart Express Submit customers have had their sites automatically transferred to Small Business Listings. This means that although existing customers paid a "One Time Fee" of $199 or $299 for a site listing with no set expiry period, they are now only entitled to $300 worth of free clicks at the maximum rate of 100 clicks per month (meaning, unless you pay more money, your site will be only be listed in Looksmart for the next 20 months). Web Rank are disappointed by this development and believe it represents poor value for money. For those new to Looksmart, Small Business Listings set up includes: 1)
Create Your Listing
for a Set Up Fee of USD 49 which includes: 2) Set Your Monthly Budget: -
set your maximum monthly budget 3) Account Management -
traffic reporting Cost:
Click
Here for Our Looksmart LookListings Small Business Pricing More
Info: http://listings.looksmart.com/
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