Promoting Your Website Through Paid Promotion
Basic strategies for Marketing your website are listed in Marketing 101 - these techniques are basically free considerations. These techniques will ensure that your site may be returned on a basic keyword search - but does not guarantee the potential customer may see it.  If 5 million websites are returned on a search and your website is on the bottom of the list of 20 websites per page - the potential customer would have to click many times to even see your website.

Much like the 'yellow pages' potential customers are more likely to click on a website listed on the first page of search results - not the last page. 

In order to get a premium listings in top search engines and services (Yahoo, Google and AOL) you enter a new realm, the realm of Paid Promotions.  

AOL typically wants to know your marketing budget and if it is less than $5,000 - it is next to impossible to get listed through a premium listing on AOL.

Yahoo and Google Paid Promotion Services will list your website at the top of the search (based on keywords) or provide you a sponsor link to the right.  Keywords are priced based on how competitive the keyword is and how high your competitors are willing to go - much like an auction.  You will pay on a Cost Per Click (CPC) basis. That is every time a customer 'clicks' on your link you will be charged from Yahoo and Google.   Remember that just because a customer visits your website it does not guarantee a sale - I believe a good average is 10 customers viewing = 1 sale. 
Yahoo

As you can see from the screen shot above.  The featured advertisers (sponsors) are listed to the right of the screen.  A few years ago much marketing could be done simply by blood, sweat and tears and a few websites (Dynabody Fitness Equipment - which is one of ours - is still holding a premium listing in this search engine) prior to paid submissions. But given the first screen of the search engine shows the top 20 websites of 3,200,000 (3 million) websites containing meta keywords of 'fitness equipment' - odds are not real good that you will get listed without becoming a sponsor or advertiser. 

So how do you get listed on Yahoo ? A company called Overture manages the search results for Yahoo, MSN, Alta Vista and others.  

  • You write a site description for your website
  • Select keywords or search terms you would like potential customers to be able to find your website by 
  • Bid on the keywords. During the process you will be provided the opportunity to see what particular keywords are.  You will see a list of the top three bids, unless you intend on beating the current bid or at least being in the top 3 of this bid - it will be a waste of your money to do anything else.   
  • Provide Overture with your budgeted amount. The amount is paid up front and deducted as it is used based on 'Cost Per Click' to your website. 
  • Once the site description and keywords are approved by one of their editors your site is submitted to be promoted to the Overture network of search engines. 

Every time a potential customer clicks on your sponsored link your budgeted amount provided to Overture is deducted the cost of that keyword. 

To learn more about Overture and Sign-Up for their services please visit

www.overture.com
Google

Google works much like Overture. The Sponsored Links are displayed in basic search through Google, Ask Jeeves, AOL and Earthlink. Charges are calculated based on Costs Per Click (CPC).
  • Write your advertisement
  • Target your audience (language & country)
  • Select your keywords - from this screen you will be provided a list and average estimate daily budget for the keywords you have selected.
  • Specify your daily budget 
  • Create an account and provide the budgeted amount to Google. 

To learn more and sign up for Google Paid Promotions visit

Google Paid Promotions

My Personal Recommendations
My personal recommendations for paid promotions are to try Google first.  These recommendations are based on the following:
  • Penalized for running out of budget. With Overture once your budgeted amount is used up - your listing is dropped.  With Google if the bugeted amount is used up - your 'ad' is put on hold and when more budget is provided - the listing appears where it was - it does not get penalized and lose position.
  • Easier to calculate your anticipated costs for advertising
  • Larger audience base with Google, AOL, Ask Jeeves and Earthlink.

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