This resource page is a supplement
to the August 17, 2000 issue
"Get Top Listings by Lunchtime, Traffic by Dinner!"
This resource page is a supplement to the
August 17, 2000 issue of the Ask Vicki ezine.
If you stumbled on this page and you're not
yet a subscriber, you can subscribe FREE from here:
www.eHits.com/AskVicki
Despite the hype, most people achieve little success
with their website listings on the pay-for-position
search engines. But if you're "in the know" you can
have wonderful success with these engines.
Follow these tips and you can be listed near the
top of the pay-for-position search engines by lunch
time, and have a flood of traffic to your site by
dinner.
Before we dive in, I'd like to offer you an evaluation
copy of Traffic 2000, which you can download while you are
reading this. Just click to
www.Traffic2000.com/download (this page will open in a new
window) This is the best marketing course you'll find anywhere,
it's won awards and is recommended by 33 (yes 33!) top ezine
publishers. The download takes about 5 minutes, so start it now
and by the time you get to the bottom of this webpage it
will be downloaded.
Now back to our discussion.
We all know how important it is to be listed on the
popular search engines, but if your site isn't listed
in the top ten search results you might as well not be listed
at all. Here's the challenge: For a majority of popular keywords,
it takes an expert to achieve top listings. And here's why:
If you searched for the keywords "pet supplies,"
HotBot or Lycos or Snap may find 44,378 website listings
and guess what... virtually all of those 44,378 websites
want to be listed in the top ten!
But with the pay-for-position search engines like Goto.com,
you don't have to be an expert to achieve top listings,
because you "bid" for your position in the search results.
For example, let's say the website in the #1 search results
position has bid ten cents per visitor, meaning they've agreed
to pay ten cents for each person who clicks through to their
website. And the #2 position website has bid seven cents,
and the #3 position website has bid 5 cents. With this system
you can instantly place your website at any position, simply
by outbidding the site in that position. Pretty cool, huh?
Instant positioning.
The big gotcha is that Goto.com has been around so long,
that there are many many bidders and the positioning prices
have been driven high. For some keywords, the top results
bids are at $1-$2 per click-through. That's an extreme case,
however the majority of keywords are higher than most people
would like to see. But don't be alarmed, because we've got some
great tips which can bring you success in the pay-for-position
search engine game.
- First off, Goto.com isn't the only game in town.
Get your site listed on the other pay-for-position engines.
Sure Goto.com is the most popular and gets the most traffic of
all the pay-for-position search engines. But there are many
such engines, and you should get on them all.
Personally, I pay about twenty-five cents per visitor
to have my cozy spot near the top of the Goto.com
search results. But on other engines I pay
one to five cents per visitor. The majority of these
engines are surprisingly cheap. Here's a list of
pay-for-position engines:
The above is a partial listing. To get a full listing emailed to
you, send a blank email to this autoresponder:
searchengines@fastfacts.net
The email message you receive will display the URLs as live
hotlinks (unless you are using an older email program).
This allows you to save the message
and use it as a "launchpad" to regularly visit the various search engine
websites to maintain your bid listings.
2/25/01 Update: We have added two engines to this list which
charge as low as $.001 (one tenth of one cent) per click. i.e. That's 1,000
visitors for $1, or 10,000 visitors for $10. These are the last
two engines listed in the email message you will receive.
- Don't just bid on one or two keywords. Or on five or ten.
Bid on 25, 50 or 500 keywords! That way you can achieve
25 times, 50 times or 500 times the traffic.
Most people don't know this, but there's a special way to
submit "bulk" keyword bids.
In most cases, the engines will accept your bids in spreadsheet
format. Goto.com offers a spreadsheet template you can download,
fill out, then return to them. For each engine, carefully review
their site for details on their bulk or batch keyword submission
procedure. If you don't see anything on the site, email them
and ask if they'll accept bids in spreadsheet format. We found
that many don't have this info on their site, but on request they
will accept bulk bids in spreadsheet format.
Ahhh, the light bulb went on. If bidding on one or two keywords
brings you say 20 visitors a say, think about the traffic you'll
get if do bulk bidding!
- On some engines, for certain popular categories the top
listings (i.e the top three bids) also appear on the
search engine site's homepage. If you can get your listing
on the high-traffic home page of a search engine, you could
realize a substantial increase in the amount of traffic to
your site. There are only certain categories (e.g. travel,
entertainment, sports, Internet, computer, etc.) which appear
on the home page. Try and fit your listing into one of these
categories, then work hard to get a top 3 listing.
Getting agressive positioning of your website in a good number
of pay-for-position search engines is an excellent "power technique"
that you can set up now, and have work for you around the clock
with minimal maintenance.
If you want to learn about additional marketing
"power techniques," you should check out
www.Traffic2000.com. This award winning marketing
course has received some national press coverage, and
it is recommended by 33 ezine publishers, who have
put their reputations on the line to say that this
course is GREAT. I highly recommend you click over
and check out the site.
See you next week!
Victoria Steele
www.eHits.com/AskVicki
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