Bidding

Yahoo SM
• Yahoo places your bid at 1 penny over your next lowest competitor. Thus, if you bid $3.00 per click, and next highest bid is $1.95 per click, you will only pay $1.96 per click.
• Yahoo allows you to see who you are bidding against and what they are bidding, so you know exactly where you will rank, and how much you will pay.
• Yahoo's maximum bid is $999.99
• Yahoo's minimum bid is $0.10

Google AdWords
• Google doesn't tell you how much you will pay per click. Thus, if you bid $3.00 per click, you will pay anywhere from $0.05 to $3.00 per click.
• Google does not allow you to know how much your competitors are bidding per click.
• An advantage with Google is that you will rank higher if your click-through rate (CT rate) is better (a CT rate is ratio of clicks on your ad to number of times your ad is shown). Thus, you may have a better rank than your competitor, even if he or she bids more than you (because of your CT rate).
• Google's maximum bid is $100.00
• Google's minimum bid is $0.05

Yahoo SM
• Yahoo will drop your keyphrase if CT rate is ranked very low for a significant period of time. In actuality, this rarely happens. Your keyphrase has to perform quite dismally for it to get dropped.

Google AdWords
• Google drops keyphrases with POTENTIALLY low CT rates. If Google deems that your keyphrase has done poorly for other customers, then your keyphrase won't even get chance to make a single (first!) impression. This can be very frustrating when your keyphrases are very relevant, but Google won't even let them see light of day. The flip side, of course, is that if your keyphrase's CT rate is good, you will get a higher ranking (even if you bid lower than your competition).

Google AdWords
• Google allows you to choose your country and language by selecting them in a dropdown box. Very simple, very efficient, and very effective.
• The language is based on language setting of visitor's computer. For example, if you are targeting Spanish Americans, than you will want to target Spanish AND English languages because many Spanish Americans use English computers. Just make sure that you choose Spanish-only keyphrases.

Yahoo SM
• Yahoo's system for countries and languages is downright miserable. You have to re-register for every country (and only twenty countries are available).
• Worse, you have to re-submit all your keyphrases and reset all your bids.
• What's more, each country has different criteria for submission. This means you have to rebuild your campaign for USA, UK, and Australia. Canada is there, but you are not allowed to submit English keyphrases (?!?), only French (FYI: Canada's workforce is 73% English, 22% French). In Switzerland, you can submit in Italian, German and French; there is no language differentiation.
• Notable missing countries: Mexico, China, English Canada (which is grouped with USA), South Korea, India, Russia...

Yahoo SM
• Yahoo offers many useful reports. And while you can find just about everything you might need, it's left up to you to figure out which report contains information you were looking for.

Google AdWords
• Google offers customizable reports. You can ask for anything you want, and you will get it.
• They also offer to email you your customized report on a regular basis.

As soon as you register your domain name, submit it to Google!

Even if you haven’t built your site, or written an copy, or even thought about your content, submit your domain name to Google. In fact, even if you haven’t fully articulated your business plan and marketing plan, submit your domain name to Google.

Don’t wait!

There are two reasons for this. Firstly, getting on search engines has always taken a long time for a new site. Even assuming you do everything right, it takes months before your site is even indexed, and more months before it starts to rank well. As a rule of thumb, never expect to rank highly within 6 months of submitting your site to Google.

The second reason is a recent phenomenon called ‘Google Sandbox’. Many SEO experts believe that Google ‘sandboxes’ new websites. Whenever it detects a new website, it withholds its rightful ranking for a period while it determines whether your site is a genuine, credible, long term site. It does this to discourage creation of SPAM websites (sites which serve no useful purpose other than to boost ranking of some other site).

By submitting your domain name to Google as soon as you register it, you’re establishing a site history even if site has no content. By time you’ve built your site, written your copy, and developed rest of your content (and written your business and marketing plans), Google will probably see no need to sandbox you.

If you wait until launch day to submit your site, you’ll spend a month or two (maybe more) sitting in sandbox watching potential customers spend their money elsewhere.

How to submit your site to Google

Don’t waste money by paying someone else to submit your site to Google. It’s easy!

Simply go to http://www.google.com.au/addurl.html, enter your URL (domain name) and a few comments or keywords to describe your site. Then click ‘Submit’. That’s all there is to it. You only have to do it once, and only for your top level page (i.e. Home page).

Google’s robots will then crawl your website next time they’re out and about. Of course, they don’t guarantee that you’ll be included in their results.

IMPORTANT: As mentioned above, it takes quite a while for your site to appear in search engines. This is partly because search engines are big and slow – especially when it comes to new sites. It will take a minimum of 6-8 weeks before your site is indexed.

How to submit your site to other search engines

There are hundreds of search engines on Internet. It’s a lucrative business, after all! But don’t panic; studies suggest that top 11 search engines account for about 90% of web traffic. In other words, if you have top 11 covered, there’s no need to submit to rest.