Your success on the web will in large part be dictated by how well you do in attracting search engine traffic. We've constructed your web pages to maximize the ranking that the major search services will give you for certain search queries, however common sense makes it clear that only a small handful of people can occupy the top slots at any given time for any given query.

Depending on your field, there may be dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of other sites that offer something similar to what you do. Ideally your website will be listed on the first 2 to 3 pages of search results for a highly relevant query, but with so many competitors (and with different search engines using different algorithms), that is very difficult to consistently accomplish.

Over the past few years a new promotion model called "pay per click" (PPC) has come into existence to help businesses get better position. That means that you can bid on certain relevant query phrases to receive a higher "sponsored" listing on a results page, but you'd only pay for that listing if someone actually clicked your name and arrived at your site -- thus, "pay per click".

Here is how you can utilize this promotional tool...

~ First, you give a lot of thought to assembling some 2, 3, and 4 word search phrases that directly relate to what you do. Make a list of as many of these phrases as you want;
~ Next, you decide on a monthly budget that you can comfortably devote to site promotion via the PPC process (the minimum is in the $25 range);
~ Once you have determined your most important search phrases and a budget, then set up an account (or we can do it for you) at one or more of the primary PPC services;
~ Check to see what it would cost for your specific search phrases to be in the top positions (it could be as little as a dime or it could be considerably more -- I generally recommend a cutoff of about 17-22 cents per click);
~ Finally, once the account is active then your listings will be returned on a search page whenever someone uses as their query one of the specific phrases that you selected. If a visitor clicks that listing, then you'll be charged the agreed upon bid amount.
~ So for example, if you agree to pay 15 cents for a phrase that puts you in the #2 position, and in a month 50 people click your name because of that specific phrase, then you'd be charged $7.50 for that one search term. If you had 6 phrases that generated that level of traffic, then your charge for that month would be $45.00 for the 300 targeted visitors.

As you can see, this allows you to get far better visibility than you may get if you leave your position strictly to chance. The PPC services allow you to set a fixed monthly amount, so you'll not be charged more than that $$ figure (as mentioned, most of them have a minimum however of about $25). If for some reason you do not use all of your fixed monthly amount, then what is left will carry over to the next month.

Depending on the monthly $$ amount that you wish to dedicate, you can consider participating in one or more of the PPC services. Your first considerations should be Overture (feeds results to Yahoo and many others) and GoogleAdwords, with Findwhat, Kanoodle and Looksmart being secondary choices.

You are not under any long term contracts with these services, and you can "pause" the promotion campaign anytime you want, so in my opinion this is a great way to get targeted visitors without spending a small fortune. If we set this up for you, then the time it takes us will depend on how many services you decide to use and how many search terms you want in the bidding. Generally, if you select about 15 search terms then you should expect it will take us about 90 minutes per PPC service, so factor that fee into your promotion budget.

I do recommend this method of promotion, with the following caveat:  You should only use very targeted search phrases and you should not set your individual bids or fixed monthly amounts too high when you first start out (though it is important to try to be listed in the top 5 results if at all possible).

By using search phrases that are highly focused, you are more likely to get visitors who are looking for what you are doing, as opposed to people who are aimlessly wandering the web and not particularly serious about you or your business.

And I recommend that you initially use a realistic but not too high monthly budget because this is not a magic bullet and thus you don't want to throw a lot of money at something that may possibly only have marginal results for you. If on the other hand you find that it is working tremendously well, then you can always increase the promotion budget to reflect the level of sales that you are generating.

The way I look at it, if I send out color postcards to my mailing list announcing my website, then each postcard stamp will be 23 cents, and the card itself may cost me another dime, so I'd have 33 cents into each & every one. AND, I'd have no guarantee whatsoever that any given person would actually visit my site, so many of those cards would be wasted.

Using our example at the top of 300 visitors, the minimum cost of a postcard mailing would therefore be $99 (assuming the highly unlikely scenario where every single person who got a card visited the site), as opposed to only $45 of measurable traffic for PPC. Thus, in terms of efficiency the PPC model seems far superior to the postal mailing because I know that each person actually arrived at my site and presumably viewed what I was doing.

Think about this approach as a way for you to generate immediate traffic, and if you decide you'd like us to handle the project, and we'll get the PPC ball rolling. Remember, you are not locked into it, though to give PPC a fair chance I would recommend at least a 6 month commitment to see whether or not this type of site promotion is right for you...

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