Five Minute Introduction to OvertureWritten by Alan Grissett
If topic of search engine promotion sounds interesting, but you're not quite sure if you want to deal with submitting to an engine or directory and then waiting for results, there is one search service that eliminates confusion and ranks sites purely on one factor: how much a business is willing to pay for a listing. This pure-market-based service is called Overture (formerly GoTo.com), and it can generate extremely targeted leads and referrals to businesses willing to pay for them.Overture operates on a competitive bidding structure. Businesses place per-click bids on specific keyword phrases, such as "automotive parts" or "golf shoes", and higher per-click bid a business makes, higher ranking that business will receive for that phrase. For example, if Company A places a $0.30 per-click bid on phrase "motorcycle repair manual", and Company B bids $0.29 per click on same phrase, Company A's listing will appear before that of Company B. This sounds pretty straightforward, and it is, but there are two factors that are crucial for success with Overture - keyword selection and tracking. To begin with, a company must analyze how customers search for products or services they offer, and more specifically, keyword phrases that are used to find products or services offered. There is one maxim here that should not be ignored: The more specific keyword phrase that is bid on, more targeted results. For example, owner of a small used book store may be inclined to bid on terms like "books", "used books", and "book store", but searches on phrases like these would not generate targeted leads. To find good phrases for our book store owner to bid on, we need to dig a little deeper into her business. Perhaps, because bookstore is in Houston medical center area, she has a large selection of used medical books. This would give her a competitive advantage in selling these types of books, so she should try to find phrases that people use to find used medical books online. Phrases like "medical book store", "used medical books", and "discount medical books" would be good phrases to bid on because people searching on them would be good customers for her business.
| | Quick Tips on Submitting to Yahoo!Written by Alan Grissett
When submitting a Web site to Yahoo!, one of most important things that a site owner or promoter can do is find right category for their site to be submitted to. You want a category appropriate for your site and which has your most important term in it (more on importance of this last part in a bit). There are two main methods for finding out just what category a site should be submitted to. One way is to start at Yahoo! home page and "drill down" through categories until you find one that most accurately describes your site's content. Another way is to go to Yahoo!, enter a term describing your site, and then see what comes up. Which way is recommended? Well, although searching for categories based on keyword searches is probably faster, drilling down to find right category might be more accurate. Sites that are returned on keyword searches may not necessarily belong to best category for your site, so drilling down might just get you a more targeted category for your listing.
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