Ranking Relative To Specific Keywords And Phrases

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,
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.