What Should You Know About Search Engines and Pay-Per-Click?Written by Chet Childers
Here’s a fact for you, 85 to 95% of Websites are found through a search engine. You may have most incredible Website on Internet, but it will receive little or no traffic without search engine visibility and ranking. Can you imagine a billboard in Sahara desert? Who sees it? So, how will searchers find your website? What types of search engines could they use? Search engines fall into two categories. The first is referred to as natural, organic or standard. The second is called pay-per-click, paid inclusion or paid placement. Natural, organic and standard are interchangeable terms describing a search engine that bases its search rankings on a ranking algorithm. The algorithms involve a number of criteria and parameters, all relating to content of website, website’s size, number of incoming links to website, and content’s relevancy. You will hear terms such as keyword relevancy and keyword density to describe various components of algorithms. For standard search engines, you, your webmaster or hired search engine optimization specialist could spend considerable time optimizing your website to achieve top rankings. The goal is for your website to appear on first or second page of search engines’ results when your target user searches keywords or keyword phrases. The good news is rankings on standard search engines are free. The downside is tremendous amount of time and effort required to achieve exceptional search engine rankings. Let’s confess to each other that top rankings on standard search engines can be tough and timely to achieve! The interchangeable terms pay-per-click, paid inclusion or paid placement describe a search engine that bases its search rankings on a "bid for position" basis. Simply stated, you "bid" a price to be in a specific position of search rankings for a particular search keyword or keyword phrase. For example, #1 position on search phrase "pay per click" recently required a bid of $3.55 per click, whereas 15th position required only a bid of 55 cents. As a result, your differential website advertising costs between position #1 and #15 can be considerable. With pay-per-click search engines, your ability to bid high can dramatically impact your website's search engine ranking when search results display website domain names or URL's for search keyword or keyword phrase. The benefit is your website gains visibility with searcher, but you are not charged pay-per-click "bid" until a searcher actually clicks on your website domain name or URL displayed in search engine results. The selection of your website in search engine results is called a click-through. In general, click-through rates range from 1% to 5% of number of impressions. What is all of this? A click is when a searcher selects or "clicks" your pay-per-click ad. An impression is one display of your pay-per-click ad on search engine results. So, click-through rate is a measure of total number of ad clicks versus total number of impressions in a period of time: Click-Through Rate % = Total Number of Ad Clicks / Total Number of Ad Impressions * 100 Let's do math for our #1 position bid of $3.55 per click. In September, 2004 there were 21,535 searches for "pay per click." First, let’s assume a 1% click-through rate. The top bidder spent $764.49 (21,535 * 1% * $3.55). Now, at a 5% click-through rate top bidder spent $3,822.45 (21,535 * 5% * $3.55). Budgeting and controlling marketing expenses with such a broad range of potential costs could be tough. Plus, such costs could be tip of iceberg. We still must consider derivatives of keyword or keyword phrase. So, was being #1 worthwhile? That depends on your website’s cost per visitor, conversion rate and profit margin of your product or service. From what we’ve covered so far, you should realize you can achieve a top or high ranking through pay-per-click search engine. But, a high ranking will cost money and these costs can be volatile. Meanwhile, standard search engine remains free.
| | "Create a Flood of Traffic with 500 Words"Written by Shannon Emmanuel
Are you looking to increase your relevancy in search engines? You probably have heard that increasing links to your site has an impact on your listing. But did you know you can do it without waiting, or asking other sites to link to you themselves? If you can write a 500-1000 word article about your business, you can increase your links in 24 hours. Here's secret: Every article submitted to article directories includes a resource box. This is a short sentence or paragraph about author. By including link to your site (MUST include http://) you can post YOUR link as many places as you want. There are dozens of free article directories that provide content for websites and newsletter publishers who are just waiting for fresh content. If your article is used by someone, your link goes with it as they are not allowed to remove credits/resources. So they do even more advertising for you.
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