Beginner's Guide to Pay Per Click Search Engines (Part 1)
By Kalena Jordan
Pay per click (PPC) advertising via search
engines has
become extremely popular with businesses of all
sizes,
due to the booming search market and the massive
growth in online sales over the past few years.
According to ComScore
Networks, online consumer spending
for the 2004/5 financial year is expected to top
USD 66
billion dollars, up 25% on the previous year.
That's
right, 66 BILLION dollars! A large chunk of that
expenditure will come from leads generated via
pay per
click search engines.
If you've been thinking about trying out PPC
engines
but are confused about the different models
available
and the costs involved, this article will shed
some light.
I will also explain the newly launched PPC products
offered by Yahoo! Search Marketing (formerly
operating under the Overture brand).
Below is a current list of the most popular pay for
performance search engine advertising models:
1) Yahoo! Sponsored Search - PPC
2) Yahoo! Content Match - PPC
3) Yahoo! Local Sponsored Search - PPC
4) Yahoo! Search Submit Express - Paid
Inclusion
5) Yahoo! Search Submit Pro - Hybrid Paid
Inclusion/PPC
6) Google AdWords - PPC
7) Google AdSense - PPC affiliate program
8) Looksmart LookListings - PPC
You will find that some of these will provide
better
results than others. I'm not going to recommend one
over another here because results vary widely and
really depend on your site content, your market and
your budget.
Below is a brief description of each
product offering and the minimum cost involved.
Yahoo! Sponsored Search
Yahoo! Sponsored Search is the new name for
what was recently called Overture Precision
Match. Sponsored Search prominently
displays your business in search results on some
of the top U.S. search properties. With
Sponsored Search, you set the price
you're willing to pay for each customer who
clicks on your listing.
If you create a keyword campaign and your bid buys
their "premium listings" (top 3 positions) for
particular keywords or search phrases, your bid
buys you top listings on Yahoo's partner sites, (Yahoo, MSN,
AltaVista, InfoSpace, Excite, AllTheWeb and a
range of news and content portals, such as
CNN).
For example, go to AllTheWeb and
type in a search for "used cars". Take note of
the top
3 spots. Now go to MSN Search and
type in a search for "used cars". You'll see that
the "Sponsored Sites" listings in the green box
at the
top (and/or the text ads to the right) contain
the same
top 3 listings from AllTheWeb. The
regular MSN
directory listings follow underneath the green
box. So
basically, purchasing PPC listings on
Yahoo! can
give
you top billing on other major search engines too.
For a monthly fee, listings can be automatically
monitored using the Yahoo! Search Optimizer to ensure bid
amounts are consistent to attain target positions
without going over budget. Volume levels are
determined by your budget, as you only pay for the
traffic delivered.
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 USD20 minimum monthly
spend and a USD30 non-refundable initial deposit is
required to open the account (which is applied
to click-
throughs). There is a minimum bid requirement of
USD
0.10 per click through and you pay the bid price
EACH
TIME somebody clicks your ad from Yahoo!
and their partner listings.
With the large traffic numbers driven to your
site via Yahoo! Sponsored Search, the
costs of
keyword bid campaigns can quickly add up, so I
highly recommend deciding on a total budget so
that you can develop a cost effective keyword
bid allocation and maintenance plan combining
both premium (top 3) and other listings.
Yahoo! provides detailed reporting tools
to help
you track the performance of the PPC campaign and
traffic generated. Yahoo! also offers a
special Keyword Selector Tool
to assist in the selection of your keywords, a View Bids Tool, where you can see the
current maximum bids and listings for the top 3
advertisers on any search term, a PPC ROI Calculator and a CPM ROI Calculator.
Yahoo! offers two sign-up plans, Fast Track, or Self Serve,
giving you the choice of expert assistance or
starting out on your own. With Fast
Track, Yahoo! experts research your
website and recommend effective search terms
based on the content of your site and
Yahoo!'s editorial
guidelines. They also create customized ad
titles and descriptions based on those search
terms. Fast Track has a one time service
fee of USD199, while Self Serve is free.
For more information on Yahoo! Sponsored
Search, Click Here.
Yahoo! Content Match
Content Match works on the same principle as
Yahoo! Sponsored Search, but offers
advertisers access to more targeted customers on a
pay-per-click basis by displaying their site
listings alongside related articles, product
reviews and
other information on the Content Match
partner
network.
This network includes sites like Yahoo!,
MSN.com,
CNN.com and ESPN.com. Yahoo!
Content Match
complements Sponsored Search while offering
separate pricing.
Yahoo! Content Match works like this:
1) When you sign up for Sponsored
Search, your Yahoo! account will be set up to
automatically receive Content Match traffic,
and your listings are automatically re-purposed for
Content Match.
2) When a web user goes to Yahoo! and
views content pages (such as articles),
Yahoo!
provides one or more relevant ad listings on the
same page.
3) Users may also be targeted based on their
interests and actions. For example, a user who
demonstrates an interest in photography-related
topics on one site may be provided with
photography-related Content Match
listings on that site or on other Content
Match publisher sites such as CNN and
ESPN.
4) Minimum bids start at USD 0.10, and you pay
only when a user clicks on your listing.
5) You can manage and track the performance
of your Content Match listings from
the "Manage Content Match" pages in your
Sponsored Search Account once you have
completed the Sponsored Search advertiser
sign-up process.
6) Separate campaign management, including
bidding, ad listing and tracking, lets you
adjust your
bids and measure performance independent of
Sponsored Search to achieve maximum ROI.
7) You can control your advertising spend across
your Content Match campaigns with
Yahoo!'s
Budgeting feature.
For more information on Yahoo! Content
Match,
Click Here.
Yahoo! Local Sponsored Search
Yahoo! also offers a regionally-focused
pay-per-click
advertising option. Yahoo! Local Sponsored
Search enables both online and offline
businesses
to potentially increase sales by precisely
targeting
customers in a specific geographic region.
Local Sponsored Search works best for
businesses that are targeting customers in their
neighborhood seeking to purchase local products and
services via a web site or physical store location.
Local Sponsored Search features a Locator
page, which provides prospects with information
about
your business, including address, phone number,
store
hours and a map of your location. In addition,
if your
business has a Web site, your main Web page will be
displayed along with the Locator page.
Yahoo! Local Sponsored Search works like
this:
1) You select keywords you wish to bid on that
best describe your business, products or services.
Write listings and choose a geographic range
(0.5 to
100 mile radius around your location) from which
you
want to draw customers.
2) When a customer interested in your area goes
to a search site such as Yahoo! and
searches for a product or service you sell, your
listing appears.
3) When the customer clicks on your listing,
they see your Locator page and a link to your Web
site, if you have a site.
4) Just like your Yahoo! Local Sponsored
Search listing, you only pay your bidded amount
when a customer clicks on your listing and there
is no
monthly minimum.
For more information on Yahoo! Local Sponsored
Search, Click
Here.
Yahoo Search Submit Express
Through Search Submit Express you can submit
one or more web pages for consideration to
appear in
the algorithmic search results powered by the
Yahoo!
search engine. This is what is known in the search
industry as a paid inclusion model.
Search Submit Express offers a single
point of
submission for your web pages into Yahoo!,
AltaVista,
AllTheWeb, and other search portals.
If you have content that has just changed or is
updated frequently (such as pricing information or
product items), Search Submit Express
ensures
the most up-to-date content is available to search
users by refreshing your URLs every 48 hours.
The program provides detailed reporting and data
designed to help you improve your pages, optimize
program performance and generate more leads.
Search Submit Express works like this:
1) Submit your URLs for review and pay an
annual fee for quality review of your submitted
pages.
Make sure your pages follow Yahoo's Quality Guidelines.
2) Once reviewed and accepted into the
program, your pages are added to a database of
sites
that powers search results for major web portals
such
as Yahoo!, Alta Vista, AlltheWeb and others.
3) Submitted URLs are presented in search
results based on relevance to search terms.
4) When a user clicks your Search Submit
Express listing in search results, you pay a
cost-
per-click fee for that lead. You must maintain a
positive
balance in your account for your pages to remain
active in the program.
5) Your URLs are refreshed (re-crawled) every
48 hours to ensure that the most up-to-date content
is available to search users.
6) At the end of one year, you can renew your
annual subscription or let it lapse.
Submissions to Search Submit Express consist
of a review fee and a CPC (Cost per click)
component.
Billing, reporting and account management for
Search
Submit Express listings is provided by
Yahoo! or
one of
their reseller partners.
Search Submit Express annual review fees
consist of:
Price Structure (effective 30 April 05)
Price per domain (USD):
1st URL $49.00 each
URLs 2-10 $29.00 each
URLs 11-1,000 $10.00 each
In addition to the review fee, there is also a
per click
fee of either $0.15 or $0.30, depending on the
category of the content. The complete list of
categories is listed here.
For more information on Search Submit
Express,
Click Here.
Yahoo Search Submit Pro
Yahoo! Search Submit Pro is the same paid
inclusion program as Search Submit Express,
but with more features for larger advertisers.
Search Submit Pro is designed for companies
wanting to submit Web pages that might otherwise be
excluded from algorithmic search results (as
long as
they still meet Yahoo's Content Quality
Guidelines).
Examples include sites that require cookies or
session
IDs, sites with Flash content and information
stored in
content management systems, or sites that aren't
well
crawled because of Web site design.
Search Submit Pro is typically for customers
with search marketing budgets of USD 5,000 per
month
or more, or advertisers who submit more than 1,000
Web pages to the program. A dedicated account
manager is available to answer any questions,
provide
technical support, and help you manage your
Search Submit Pro program.
Search Submit Pro lets you create titles and
descriptions that are displayed as algorithmic
search
result listings. The program can automatically
generate
result listings that best match user queries.
You can
update the information frequently, independent of
changes to your Web site.
Search Submit Pro works like this:
1) You provide an XML feed of your URLs.
2) Once reviewed and accepted into the
program, your pages are added to a database of
sites
that powers search results for major web portals
such
as Yahoo!, Alta Vista, AlltheWeb and others.
3) When Internet users visit the Search
Submit Pro partner sites and enter keyword
searches, your listings may appear within the
search
results based on their relevance to the user's
search
request.
4) Your URLs are refreshed (re-crawled) every
48 hours to ensure that the most up-to-date content
is available to search users.
Pricing for Search Submit Pro is
based on cost per click - customers are charged
each time a user clicks on one of the customer's
search listings. The specific cost is based on
the type and category of content provided for
inclusion in the
algorithmic search results and is obtainable
from a Yahoo! Account Manager.
For more information on Search Submit Pro,
Click Here.
In Part 2 of this article, we will look at the
remaining pay for performance search engine
models on our list, starting with Google
AdWords. Stay tuned!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The above article may be re-published as long
as it remains unchanged and links to Search
Engine College.
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Greetings Readers!
This month's newsletter has a bit of a Pay Per
Click
theme. I've spent the last few weeks developing
self-
study courses for Search Engine College
on the
topic of Pay Per Click search engine advertising
and
just when I had gotten used to the various PPC
search
engine models out there, Yahoo! decided
to re-package
all their Overture products!
So now I am re-writing all the courses to take into
account the re-branding (see the news item on
the re-brand below). For those of you
interested, our shiny
new PPC self-study courses will be available
later this
month. You can pre-register here.
Getting my head around all the various PPC search
engine models available made me realise how
confusing
PPC advertising must seem to the uninitiated,
particularly now with Overture re-branded as
Yahoo! Search Marketing. I found it quite
challenging and I've been studying the search
industry
for over 8 years!
It prompted me to write a two-part article for
webmasters as a Beginner's Guide to PPC. Part 1
of the
article is our feature this month. Keep an eye
out for
Part 2 in our next newsletter.
Enjoy this issue and remember to visit Search
Engine College to check out our fun online
courses
in various search engine marketing subjects.
Till next time - wishing you high rankings...
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| FAQ1: Submitting to Regional Search Engine Versions | | |  Hi Kalena
Hi, I have a question. I need to submit my
website to the top 'English' search engines in
Canada, the US, various countries in Europe,
Aus., Nz. and Mexico. My question is: If I
submit my website to various versions of yahoo
or google, would this be spamming and not work?
Example, rather then just submitting to
yahoo.com, instead I would submit to yahoo.com
and uk.yahoo.com and au.yahoo.com etc... etc...
etc... so I can get on the various versions so
as to ensure I get listed around the around,
would this work or no?
Lastly, just one more question, how often should
I submit my website to search engines... once
every few weeks???
Thank you for your time.
Tina
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Hi Tina
Thanks for emailing! Regarding your questions:
1) You don't need to submit your site to various
versions of Google or Yahoo!. To
be included in
the Yahoo! Directory, simply submit to
Yahoo.com
via the most logical category for your site
(e.g. if your company is based in Canada, you
should choose an appropriate category under the
Canada regional listings). Your site will be
shown to searchers worldwide.
If your site has a regional domain extension
like .ca, it has a higher chance of being shown
to searchers
choosing specific search results from that
region, e.g. Searchers using Yahoo.ca and
choosing "Results from Canada" rather than
"Results from All the Web".
You can't submit multiple domains to the Yahoo!
Directory if they point to the same web content
so choose the most logical domain and promote it
on other search engines too. To be included in
the Yahoo! algorithmic database (i.e.
Yahoo!
Search results rather than Yahoo!
Directory
results), submit your sites using Yahoo's Add
URL link.
To be included in Google, you don't need
to do
anything. As long as you have at least 1 link
pointing to your site, Google will find
you when
they do their regular indexing of the web. Do
keep in mind that a regional domain extension is
more likely to be shown to searchers from that
region.
Also, it is widely thought that Google takes
into account the location of your site host when
displaying regional search results, so if your
site has a regional extension of .ca but is
hosted in the U.K., Google may assume that
yours is a U.K. site and not show it to
searchers seeking Canadian sites.
2) READ MY LIPS: you NEVER need to re-submit
your site! Not ever! Search engines regularly
re-index sites in their database so unless your
site goes offline while this takes place,
engines will keep your site in their database
and spider it regularly. Re-submitting is a
complete waste of your time.
Hope this helps!
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| FAQ2: Yahoo! Cache Date | | |  Hi Kalena,
I am a Search Engine Specialist. I went through
your site and it is good. I have been in the
Search Engine field for the past 4 years. I am
mainly concentrating on Google, Yahoo and MSN.
Currently, I am working as a Web Traffic Manager.
I need a few clarifications about search engines:
1. Do you have any idea how to findout when
yahoo cache date of a webpage?
2. Google penalising the websites that are
creating artifical link exchange to increase the
pagerank. What is your opinion?
I am awaiting for your reply.
Thank you,
regards
Ramki
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Hi Ramki
Your first question demanded a bit of online
research. My friend Randy from the High
Ranking's Forum sent me a link to a tool he
created to determine the modification date of
websites in
Yahoo!
The Yahoo
Modification Date Finder lists the web page
address, the modification date according to
Yahoo!, a link to Yahoo's cached
version of the page and the file size of the page.
Regarding question 2), I think Google's
attitude
to sites that are trying to artificially inflate
link popularity or "sell" PageRank is to be
expected and applauded.
There is no need to artificially create link
popularity when all it takes is time and hard
work to gain link popularity naturally.
All the best Ramki. | | |
| Exclusive Discount Offer for SEC | | |  As a valued subscriber of The Search
Light, we
are pleased to provide you with an exclusive
discount
coupon for redemption towards the course/s of your
choice at Search Engine College.
The coupon will give you a 15% discount on
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| FAQ3: Adding Offline Content to a Web Site | | |  Dear Kalena,
I am authoring a quarterly magazine called
Albuquerque Homebuyer. I have a nice real estate
web site at MarqueMalan.com. I want to put my
magazine on my web site in electronic format.
If I want the search engines to spider the
content of these articles, may I put them as
"click on" HTML or Adobe Acrobat files, or do I
need to have them all written out in HTML?
I currently can not afford much SEO work, but
hope to be able to hire a firm in a few more
months. For now I am doing what I can on my own.
Thank you for considering my question.
Sincerely,
Marque
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Hello Marque
Regarding your question, it is an excellent idea
to add your magazine to your site. This will add
fresh content to your site every quarter and the
search engines and visitors will love you for it.
For best results, you really do need to add the
content in HTML format, this will enable search
engines to index your content and also help
boost your rankings for real estate related
search queries (because I am guessing your
articles will feature these keywords). I know it
is probably a lot of work, but you will reap the
rewards if you do it this way.
In the meantime, consider adding your past
newsletters in Adobe format so your visitors can
at least download them. This won't help your
search rankings much but I'm sure your visitors
and subscribers will appreciate it.
All the best! | | |
| Search News: Yahoo! Rebrands Overture | | |  As most readers will know, in February 2003,
Overture bought both AltaVista and
FAST/AllTheWeb search engines, fuelling
speculation that they were going to launch their
own traditional search engine to better compete
with Google.
However in July 2003, Yahoo! put paid to
that by
purchasing Overture to enable them to better
compete with market leader Google. Last month
Yahoo! rebranded Overture products
under the umbrella name Yahoo! Search
Marketing.
Confused? Don't be. Most products operate in the
same way, just under a new name. See our feature
article this month for an explanation of each of
the PPC products available under the new brand.
Danny Sullivan has also written a
detailed article about the re-branding,
including a handy Google AdWords / Yahoo! Search
Marketing product comparison chart. | | |
| FAQ4: Delays in DMOZ | | | Hello Kalena,
In "How to Submit Your Site to Directories", you
say that you are a DMOZ editor, to only submit
once, and that review can take up to 6 months.
How about 7 months or more with no response to
inquiries for 3 of 3 domains?
My sites and submissions have followed
reasonable guidelines from several sources.
Regards,
Don
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Hi Don
There could be many reasons why your original
DMOZ submission has not been successful:
1) It hasn't been reviewed yet
2) You submitted it to an unsuitable category
3) You submitted it to a very popular category
with a long waiting list
4) Your site is already listed somewhere else in
DMOZ
5) Your site did not meet the DMOZ guidelines or
category guidelines
6) A site with very similar or duplicate content
to yours is already listed in DMOZ
I am only a Junior editor so I cannot view your
submission or reasons for its lack of success.
May I suggest reviewing the latest DMOZ
guidelines which should give you some clues
as to the delay or problem with your submission.
I also suggest escalating your enquiry to the
higher level category editors listed at the
bottom of the category pages you submitted to in
DMOZ or perhaps posting a polite request for
help in the DMOZ forum.
Good luck!
Have an FAQ about search engines? email
us and it might feature in our next issue. CLICK HERE for your free 15% Discount Coupon from SEC! | | |
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