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Lesson #15

PAYING FOR SEARCH ENGINE ATTENTION & RANKING
- An Overview

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN

This lesson will discuss some general principals of paying search engines for services. Search engines are going through a shakeout at the present time. Competition is heavy. They are changing their game plans on a continual basis, looking for the right way to provide a useful service to the Internet public while, at the same time, providing a good return to their investors. In this lesson, we will examine principals that apply in the long run, rather than focusing on the specifics (which will certainly change over time) of the search engines themselves.


THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN YOUR WEB PAGE AND A SEARCH ENGINE

What exactly do search engines do? They collect information on Websites and attach that information to certain search words and phrases. When users search the Internet using particular words or phrases, the search engine provides a list of Websites matching those words or phrases. Search engines also rank these results to determine where each of the many pages matching a particular keyword or phrase are displayed in a list and in what order. Sometimes, a search engine also enhances listings with other material or displays ads.

Websites change over time. Thus, search engines also need to revisit Websites to see what keywords and key phrases remain applicable to them and (if necessary) to re-determine their rankings.

The relationship between a Website and a search engine involves four things: 1) Initial reviewing and including; 2) Ranking relative to specific keywords and key phrases; 3) Revisiting, reviewing, re-ranking, and reporting; and 4) Listing enhancements.


INITIAL REVIEW AND INCLUSION

As we discussed in previous lessons, many search engines and directories do not include all pages submitted or found. The Websites they do accept often take many weeks or months to be reviewed and included. Thus, there are two initial factors important to the aggressive Internet entrepreneur: being included and being included in a timely manner.

With almost all the search engines, you can pay for a timely review of your site. As you may recall from our discussion of Yahoo!, Yahoo! Express guarantees review within seven days for $299. However, as you also may recall, Yahoo! Express does not guarantee inclusion—only that your site will be reviewed and included or rejected within seven business days. Many search engines do guarantee inclusion, though, and package it with a timely review and other services.

The Open Directory Project, discussed in a previous lesson, is the most notable exception to the pay-for-quick-review opportunity. ODP does not accept payment for review, inclusion, ranking, or anything else.

When looking at the search engines that do provide pay packages, examine the package of services offered to see exactly what you will get for your money. How soon will your site be reviewed? Is inclusion guaranteed? What are the total costs?


RANKING RELATIVE TO SPECIFIC KEYWORDS AND KEY PHRASES

No doubt you have heard the terms "Pay Per Clicks" or "PPCs." These terms apply to search engines that let you bid on the list ranking you will receive when someone uses a particular keyword or key phrase to search for something on that search engine. At the time of this writing, Overture.com is the leader among these PPCs.

When you open an account with a PPC and make the necessary deposit, inclusion in the search engine database is guaranteed. More importantly, you can then bid for the ranking you want for particular keywords and key phrases. For example, when someone searches a PPC, such as Overture, with a particular keyword or key phrase, the Website with the highest bid for that keyword or key phrase shows up at the top of the results list, the second highest bid shows up second in the results list, and so on.

The person bidding on the keywords only pays when someone clicks the link to his or her Website. Thus, if you bid $0.15 on the key phrase "senior discounts," and that was the highest bid for that key phrase on the PPC, your site would show up at the top of the results list every time someone searched that engine for "senior discounts." However, you would only pay the amount of your bid (in this case, $0.15) each time someone actually clicked the link to your Website. (Note: A search engine that charges you each time your site shows up in a listing, whether or not anyone clicks your Website's link, is not a PPC. Rather, it would be a "pay per impression" service.)

Most PPCs require a minimum bid amount, a minimum monthly payment, and a minimum balance in your account. Most will allow you to set a maximum monthly budget and will withdraw your site from the results list each month when your monthly budget is exhausted.

Many search engines, such as Google, will allow you to place ads that show up when people search for specific keywords or key phrases. This is slightly different from the traditional PPC search engine because your link is displayed in an ad to the side of the listed results, rather than in the list itself. Google and PPCs are similar, though, in that your ad is tied to a particular keyword or key phrase and in that you can bid for rankings for a particular keyword or key phrase. The top placement for an ad on Google, though, is the top ad position, not the top position in the search results listing.

You can find out about current PPCs by visiting the SFI Discussion Board. There are also a few Websites that, at the time of this writing, provide listings and reviews of PPCs. They are:

http://www.PayPerClickGuide.com,
http://www.PayPerClickSearchEngines.com,
http://www.PayPerClickAnalyst.com,
http://www.PPC-Directory.com, and
http://www.searchenginePayPerClick.com.

Many PPCs now exclude SFI Gateway pages. That means that even though you are willing to pay for the clicks you get, some PPCs will not accept your business if the Website is an SFI Gateway site. This is not due to any lack of legitimacy on SFI’s part but because of the sheer volume of SFI affiliates establishing accounts with PPCs. For PPCs to retain an audience of searchers, search results must have some variety. When every search for a work-at-home related keyword or key phrase results in hundreds of identical SFI Gateway sites, the results no longer have variety. PPCs have become the most common method of advertising for SFI affiliates over the last several months prior to the writing of this lesson. Thus, most of the PPCs have become saturated with SFI affiliate Websites.

There is a way around this problem. As we have stated repeatedly in this course, the best strategy is to obtain your own domain name and build your own content-rich Website that includes a well-placed affiliate link to your SFI Gateway sites. You could then list your domain URL with the PPCs and bid on keywords and key phrases relevant to the content of your Website. The enduring principal of the Internet is that it is information driven. Although it takes some effort, you must lure people to your Website with useful information. Develop a flow of information on your Website that leads to your SFI affiliate links. The PPCs should not reject a Website because it has an SFI link on it unless that is all the site contains.

Before we move on, it's important to note that the established trend for top PPCs is to contract with traditional search engines and directories to include PPC results as "sponsored links" or "featured links." The top few links on the PPC then show up in the traditional search engines’ results. For example, at the time of this writing, if you have bid one of the top three spots for a certain keyword or key phrase with Overture, your site will also show up as a "sponsored" or "featured" link at the top of the results for Yahoo!, MSN, Ask Jeeves, AltaVista, and many other popular search engines. This trend is likely to continue and accelerate in the coming weeks and months.


REVISITING, REVIEWING, RE-RANKING, AND REPORTING

Although usually packaged with other services, you can pay most search engines to review your site within set time periods and re-rank your site according to its improved content. This is important because most Internet entrepreneurs are continually working to improve their Websites by focusing more accurately on their target market. Learning comes from trial and error-- experimentation is crucial. If you have to wait months to see the effects of each small change to your Website content or your metatags, the process is not effective. Webmasters need the search engines to revisit and re-rank their sites frequently in order to determine the effectiveness of the changes they have made.

Reporting to webmasters by the search engines is also something to look for in the package of search engine services. Any information about the effectiveness of your keywords or key phrases, the performance of your site, or how to improve its ranking for particular keywords or key phrases can be very useful.

When submitting your site to various search engines and considering their pay submission packages, check how often your site will be revisited and what reporting will be available.


LISTING ENHANCEMENTS

Although this is not presently seen as often as the other pay services, listing enhancements is something you should keep an eye on. For a fee, it is possible for search engines to objectively include and rank sites according to content and relevancy and then allow webmasters to enhance their listing (in the place it shows up, according to objective ranking) by bold text, graphics, and other attention-grabbing techniques. Search engines constantly struggle to balance the needs of providing useful, relevant listings to searchers with generating revenue in the process. Listing enhancements seems to be a fair compromise in this balancing process.


SORTING OUT THE TERMINOLOGY

The terminology in this subject, like many things having to do with the Internet, often gets confusing. Generally, paying to have your site included in a search engine (whether or not some guaranteed ranking is included) is called "pay per inclusion." Paying to ensure a particular ranking for a specific keyword or key phrase is called "pay per placement." The term "pay per placement" is often confused with "pay per click" or "PPC" because the PPC search engines are the most prevalent way of paying for placement. The term "pay per click," however, relates to the means of payment, rather than the service for which payment is made.

Each search engine has its own terms to describe various fee-based services and often packages the various services together in different ways. Pay attention to the specifics of the services offered, rather than the terminology used, to avoid confusion.


CONCLUSION

When considering paying for search engine services, examine the packages offered by each for available services and pricing. Does it offer guaranteed inclusion? How about ranking for specific keywords or key phrases? If guaranteed ranking is not included, how often will the search engine revisit your site and re-rank it? How much and in what way do they charge you? Is it a flat fee, an annual fee, a fee based on impressions, a fee based on clicks to your site, or some combination of these? If you are bidding on keywords to pay for ranking (placement), how does the engine process the bidding? Will you be notified if a lower bid will maintain your position, or do you need to monitor it yourself?

Also, you want to look at the number of exposures the search engine will generate. The top ranking in a seldom-used search engine is not worth as much as the 20th ranking in a high-traffic search engine. If you are only paying per each click, this last issue is not so important. However, if there is a flat fee or annual fee involved, the question of exposures becomes paramount.

The goal is to get the best return on your investment (ROI) for any paid search engine service. In the constantly changing environment of today’s search engines and directories, this requires that you examine the offers in light of the concepts and issues discussed in this lesson.


WHAT’S COMING NEXT

Our next lesson will review what we have covered thus far in this course and tie the concepts into a practical strategy for online marketing.


by George Little
Copyright (year) Panhandle On-Line, Inc.
License granted to Carson Services, Inc. for distribution to SFI affiliates. No part of this work may be republished, redistributed, or sold without written permission of the author.

For more information on the Internet Income Course and other works and courses by George Little, see www.profitpropulsion.com.

For Web Hosting services specially designed for SFI affiliates, see www.profitpropulsion.com.

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