More Non-Answers From The Horse's Mouth

Given such "spectacular" results as noted above, I was still puzzled, for I was getting hits. Where were they coming from? So I checked out a couple of search engines and, off top of my head, did some searches.

Things like "site services," "website performance," "site improvement," and so forth. Oddly enough, a few of my pages came up in first 30. And since I know content of most pages at end of links offered, I could see there was at least some degree of relevancy.

My Conclusion

The search engines algorithms are smarter than we generally acknowledge. They do a pretty good job of sorting out page content. And they're getting better every day.

So I will continue as I have been doing. That is, submit new pages as they are completed. And I'll continue to try to include keywords as possible. But essentially I'm content to let search engines do whatever.

For one thing, my page views continue to increase. Slowly, that's true. But key lies in increase. Thus I'm not drawing too much off-target traffic.

The Best Strategy For You

For some sites, position on search engines is critical to success. In such a case, my forget-it approach would be totally inadequate. In fact if your site is seriously dependant upon traffic generated by search engines, it may be best to hire a professional service and make sure this task is done right.

This aside, power of search engines to draw free targeted traffic is weakening. Which means that in setting priorities, most should spend less time in obtaining good positions.

As with my site, better plan may be to focus promotional efforts on other strategies to generate targeted traffic you need.

Sure. Submit new pages as completed. Possibly take time to create search engine friendly content pages. But look elsewhere for traffic.

The ability of search engines to deliver free targeted traffic to your site is diminishing. Some may find emerging pay-for-submission models profitable. But most will find other avenues more rewarding. And soon enough, you won't be able to count on free search engine traffic to any significant degree.

It's very important to spend quality time creating your sponsored link as this is "online ad" that people will view in midst of search results and competing sponsored links (in some cases). You have ability to create a short headline coupled with two lines of text with approximately 35 characters per line - headline must be succinct and hard hitting and related text should backfill headline with supporting words that convey what goods or services your company provides.

Keyword selection can be most daunting task for setting up a new campaign - be prepared to spend some focused time working through multiple keywords to find those that you can afford. It typically takes 1-3 hours to find 10-20 keywords that are relatively low cost - however, if your budget is open-ended and you have sufficient marketing funds to pay $1-8. USD per keyword then it can take much less time. Your market focus is also another important variable that can impact keyword selection process - if you're in a narrow market niche with only a small number of competitors then it is much easier and faster to setup a campaign.

Finally, be aware you can find some keywords that are very inexpensive, but Google will disallow these if they don't drive a minimum clickthrough amount of roughly less than 1% - you can start off with them, but they will be turned off after 7-14 days if they aren't driving sufficient clickthrough volume.

Wordtracker Keyword Research Tool

You may want to utilize other keyword analysis tools that will give you a broader selection and help you to understand what keywords are popular and searched on, which in turn ensures keywords you do select will drive traffic and will not be disallowed by Google. Wordtracker (www.wordtracker.com) is an industry standard keyword analysis tool that those of us in online advertising world (and many others) have used for years to help us understand what keywords are popular - their service is very low cost and easy to utilize via their web site.