Marketing Your Website
By: Scott Hendison   ·   Originally Published: September 2004

As you begin to research ways to market your website, there are two terms you’ll be hearing a lot about. Those are SEM (Search Engine Marketing) and SEO (Search Engine Optimization)..

SEM is simply paid advertising on search engines, and SEO is a method of properly designing your website in a way that can be “seen” by the search engines. This month I’ll talk exclusively about SEM:

Search Engine Marketing
Placing paid advertisements on the internet in the form of search results is known as Search Engine Marketing, or PPC (Pay Per Click). For a fee, your ad will appear in front of users, and you won’t pay anything for the ad until the user actually clicks on the ad and goes to your website. Most users have become immune to clicking on the popup and banner ads, but the PPC (Pay Per Click) market continues to grow with no end in site.

The reason for this is that the PPC ads appear listed at the top of the search results on all of the major search engines. Many end users do not even notice the small words “sponsored link” that indicate a paid placement in the search results.

Google AdWords
Google places the ads on the top two rows in a shaded area, and also down along the right side inside small boxes. These are obviously ads, but still can be highly effective for driving traffic to your website. Their program is called Google AdWords and you can read more about it at http://adwords.google.com.

The Google AdWords results are also displayed (as of this writing) on Lycos, HotBot, AOL, AskJeeves, Teoma, Netscape and Iwon.. The ads are also distributed on thousands of small affiliate websites that get a small piece of the revenue they generate for Google

Overture
Overture is another PPC service. They have their own website at http://www.overture.com and they also distribute their results to a wide variety of websites. As of this writing, Overture results are currently displayed by Yahoo, MSN, AltaVista, and AllTheWeb among others. Unlike Google, most Overture ads are virtually indistinguishable from the true or “generic” results.

There are about a dozen other minor players in the PPC search engine business, but between Google and Overture, you’re covering nearly 90% of the market. In my experience the others are a waste of time and not worth the extra effort to manage, but I’m sure the landscape will change.

The way Google and Overtures PPC services work is very similar. By “bidding” on the keywords and phrases you want, your ad appears in the results. As long as you’re willing to pay more than the next guy, then your ad will appear above his. If you get outbid, then his ad moves above yours. It’s really that simple.

That doesn’t mean you can have your auto body shop come up number one for the search term “yellow banana”, but as long as your business is relevant to the search term, then it’s fairly easy to be number one. Both Overture and Google enforce certain relevancy standards that demand a certain “CTR” or (Click Through Rate) to keep the paid search results relevant to the searched for phrase, otherwise people would stop using their search engines.

Time is running out
Over the past two years the use of PPC advertising on the internet has risen dramatically. For example, two years ago, you could have the number one ad for the phrase “San Diego DUI Attorney” for under 25 cents per click. Today, that same phrase will cost the advertiser over $40 per click.

Obviously, as more people catch on to the PPC advertising methods, prices will go up and it will no longer be cost effective for certain businesses. Until then however, there’s a huge window of opportunity to get your business in the top of the search results for very little money, and if I were you, I’d get in before the window slams shut.

 

 

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Scott Hendison hereby grants reprint rights for all of his own articles on this website providing that the following italicized lines (with the live link) are included as a byline:

 

Scott Hendison is a computer & internet consultant based in Portland Oregon. He specializes in search engine placement, internet marketing, and Retail Point of Sale (POS) systems with e-commerce, for customers in five countries. for more information, visit his website is http://www.pdxtc.com.

 

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Scott is the owner/operator of Portland Technology Consultants, providing computer and internet consulting services to local Portland Oregon businesses, and over the internet in five countries. He is a member of the Independent Computer Consultants Association and is on the Board of Directors for the Oregon Computer Consultants Association.

He is also on the Board of the Gateway Area Business Association and an active member of the East Portland Chamber of Commerce. His website is filled with nearly 100 computer & technology related, articles like this one, and he has a daily blog here. If you'd like to know more, please visit the main page at http://www.pdxtc.com, or call him at 503.946.6881.

 
 

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