PPC Search Engines : Which ones are worth
your advertising dollars.
By Merle
In Part 1 of this series, we discussed the basics of Pay Per Click
Search Engines (aka "PPC"). In this installment, we're
going to discuss some of the major players in the industry and
what it takes to get started with an account of your own.
1) Overture.com: Formerly known as Goto.com, they were the first
PPC in existence, and still the best. You'll get maximum impact
for your money with Overture. You can open an account using the
"self serve option" for only $50.00. Minimum bid is
5 cents with a $20.00 monthly minimum spend. That means if you
rack up less then $20.00 in clicks you'll still be billed for
the $20.00. The amount you bid deter- mines your ranking in this
search engine.
For maximum impact you'll want to try to bid into the top 3 positions
(called "premium listings"), as these spots are shown
on some of the major search engines such as Yahoo, MSN, Altavista,
Lycos/Hotbot, and others (usually under the heading of "sponsored
listings"). This makes for great exposure due to these extensive
relationships with the majors.
2) Google.com -Ad Words Select: Recently joining the arena of
PPC with their new program "Ad Words Select," Google
is aiming to give Overture a run for their money. Their program
works slightly differently then Overture's; in some ways it's
even better. To open an account you'll need to invest $5.00 and
create short text ads. When searches are done on Google for your
keywords/phrases, your ads will show up in the right hand column
on the results page.
Unlike Overture, the position of your ads is based on two factors:
the amount of your bid, and the clickthru rate your ad receives.
Google recently made a deal with AOL to show the top 3 Ad Words
Select listings on AOL Search, along with Earthlink and Sympatico.
This really extends Google's reach and gives your site a chance
to be seen by AOL's 33 million users.
Minimum cost per click is 5 cents and you can set up a maximum
daily spend amount if you're on a tight budget. Ads can be updated
or changed whenever you like by logging into the control panel.
Beware of Google's Editors, who are a tough crowd to please and
will block your ads if they don't meet their "strict guidelines."
One thing they don't allow is all caps in your URL. For example
they won't let you put "YourDomain.com" in your ad as
they feel this is "excessive capitalization." So you'll
have to settle for "yourdomain.com." I told you they
were tough.
3) LookSmart.com: They're not looking too smart these days after
they angered many of their existing customers by changing them
over from a pay-for-submission to a PPC model. They call the new
program "LookListings Small Business." To open an account
you'll pay a $49.00 set-up fee plus a refundable deposit of $150.00.
Click thrus are all charged the same amount of .15, so your bid
won't buy you any kind of position. You'll need to rely on relevant
keywords and a great title and description for best placement.
Unlike Overture, you'll find no bidding wars here.
LookSmart's search engine partners include MSN, Netscape, Altavista,
Prodigy and CNN.com You set a monthly spend amount and LookSmart
emails reports each month of all activities.
4) FindWhat.com: Launched in Sept of 1999 and serving up over
22 million searches per day. Since FindWhat is not as well known,
you can bid on many keywords for much less than you would pay
for them with Overture. To activate an account you'll need to
deposit $25.00. Payment can be made by check or credit card. No
minimum monthly spends are required here. Minimum bid amount is
1 cent.
They do run an affiliate program whose sponsors show their search
results. Some of their affiliates and partners are: Mamma.com,
Dogpile, MetaCrawler and CNET's Search.com. But to be shown on
these sites you'll need to bid into the top 3 positions. FindWhat
also has a reputation for offering excellent customer service.
5) Kanoodle.com: Currently receiving over 410 million searches
per month. Other sites that pull from Kanoodle's paid listings
are MetaCrawler, Mamma.com and Netzero as well as 9,800 "other"
search enabled sites.
Minimum amount needed to open an account is $25.00. Minimum bid
is 1 cent. Can be paid by credit card or check. With only 1 cent
per click, you can bid on a lot of keywords and make your marketing
dollars go a lot further.
If you're interested in checking out a few others, here are some
that are not as well known but will give you free advertising
money just for opening up a new account:
http://www.Ban-X.com/
($50.00)
http://www.CoreFind.com/
($100.00)
http://www.searchanytime.com/
($10.00)
http://www.stanico.com/
($50.00)
http://www.najula.com/
Buy 10.00 and they'll give you an extra $30.00
http://www.jjump.com/
Whatever amount you deposit they'll match it.
Some other popular PPC's to investigate are:
http://www.7Search.com
http://www.Ah-Ha.com
http://www.Epilot.com
http://www.Sprinks.com
Other Helpful Tools
Free E-book Explains The Basics of PPC Search Engines
http://shoptour.co.uk/downloads/PPC-SearchEngines-Primer.exe
Enter Keywords you're interested in bidding on and they'll show
you the top 6 bids for 11 of the major PPC engines :
http://www.CompareYourClicks.com/links/bidgap.pl
To get traffic to your website you need to utilize many different
promotional tactics. Incorporating a good PPC search engine strategy
will send you highly qualified traffic for pennies on the dollar
and the best part is you only pay when they Click.
In Part 3 we'll discuss some tools that will make managing your
PPC bids a snap.
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Merle http://www.EzineAdAuction.com
"Where some of the BEST Deals in Ezine Advertising are Made"
Buy & Sell Ezine Ads in a live auction setting! Publishers
sell off your excess inventory and Buyers pick up some Fantastic
bargains. Free E-book on how to write "glowing" ezine
ads.
Download Now : http://www.ezineadauction.com/ebooks/greatezineads.pdf
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