Look for Publicly Held Companies

Search engines that have stringent guidelines on who can distribute their results tend to have more success in reducing click fraud. Publicly held companies, because of their accountability to long-term profitability and their shareholders are masters at performing due diligence on a website before accepting it as a distribution partner.

The two largest publicly held pay per click search engines are Overture and FindWhat. Both companies examine sites wishing to distribute their search results with great detail. Every partner site is required to perform a minimum amount of traffic. Sites that achieve their minimum traffic requirements are signals that site has a loyal and committed customer base. In addition, every site goes through a rigorous audit which is intended to reveal sources of traffic and fully understand how their feed will be used on that site.

Besides filtering out click fraud through initial partnership requests, publicly held companies routinely perform audits on their distribution networks and employ latest technology to find instances of click fraud.

Use PPC Spin-offs

Frustrated by vast amounts of click fraud and rising costs of keywords at most PPC’s, many advertiser’s have left world of pay per click search engine marketing in search for other advertising venues. To meet needs of this ever growing demographic, a few search engines have developed programs similar that resemble pay per click search engines in results that advertiser’s see without negative effects such as click fraud.

The most successful model of these spin-offs is TowerSearch. Rather than using a pay per click model requiring that advertisers deposit funds, bid on keywords, then subsequently deduct bidded amount from their deposited funds for every click recorded, TowerSearch opens up their traffic to advertisers without charging them on a per click basis. Their program is an ideal alternative to per click marketing and paid inclusion programs. Where paid inclusion programs do not guarantee a top position for any of keywords you target, and where pay per click marketing does not offer flat fee for inclusion in their database, TowerSearch steps up. TowerSearch guarantees both a top position as well as a flat monthly fee for that guaranteed top position.

Highly reputed ExactSeek also offers a program that guarantees placement for a flat fee. Advertisers can buy a guaranteed placement of a featured listing box for any keyword they choose for a flat fee. With draw that ExactSeek has in addition to cost benefits, ExactSeek is perfect alternative to relatively highly priced Google AdWords.

By offering flat-fee guaranteed placement, both TowerSearch and ExactSeek have taken click fraud out of equation of search engine marketing. Neither company currently offers an affiliate program to distribute listings on a per click revenue sharing basis; rather, they both rely on traffic they can generate without tempting other webmasters simply drive clicks to their listings. In addition, neither company’s model lends itself to click fraud as clicking on a listing will not cost advertiser any money. By adjusting their model’s slightly TowerSearch and ExactSeek are safe bets for advertiser’s looking to spend their money wisely.

Do Not Rely On Pay Per Click Marketing

Pay per click marketing is a valuable resource, however, with vast amounts of resources available to find quality top placements in free search engines, no marketer should be relying solely on pay per click marketing. For most webmasters, prize search engine to obtain a top ranking in is Google. With all free information available from sites such as JimWorld’s Forums, FreeWebSiteSubmission, and SearchGuild, it is possible for every webmaster to learn how they can capitalize on extreme success of Google.

In addition to offering a great pay per click alternative, Exactseek’s free listings are a great resource for webmasters looking for free traffic. Exactseek’s offers several different programs to help every webmaster achieve a higher ranking in their listings. Recently they announced a change in their ranking algorithm. Rather than focusing solely on keyword relevance which has so often been abused by dishonest webmasters, Exactseek’s now takes into account a website’s popularity as judged by Alexa. Two websites that are equal in relevancy will achieve their position by how popular Alexa judges them to be. Not only does this provide better results for end uses, but it opens up new possibilities for webmasters to capitalize off of Exactseek’s popularity.

Conclusion Search engine marketing is still best marketing available to bring high quality visitors and convert visitors into paying customers. Whether it is through pay per click programs, pay per click spin-offs, or through free listings, every marketing plan needs to include search engine marketing. Unfortunately reality of search engine marketing is that click fraud exists. By focusing your search engine marketing on companies that are less susceptible to click fraud, your marketing campaigns will see a solid ROI.

PPC-List.com is an online resource for pay per click search engines. This article may be reproduced in its entirety as long as PPC-List is attributed as author.