Allan Gardyne says, “I recommending paying the minimum account fee as an experiment and buying as many search phrases as you can possibly come up with to increase your chances of being seen. That’s a very cheap way of finding out what works.” Allan and Nathan Power run a website called PayPerClickSearchEngines.com that offers excellent information about the different pay-per-click engines. The minimum order is $25. This means that you must deposit at least $25 in order to bid on a keyword. The initial $25 is non-refundable, but any amount over that is refundable. You can purchase as many keywords as you choose, but you can only link to one page per search term. Your keywords must be relevant to your site, and your title and description must also relate to the search term. Adult website owners must purchase keywords that are clearly adult-related. So, an adult site couldn’t purchase keywords such as “girl,” “doll,” “couple,” etc. Sites that depict acts of violence or illegal activities won’t be accepted into Overture. Orders are normally processed and implemented within 3 to 5 days. This lead time is needed in order for the editors to check the relevancy of your search terms. Did you know that you can bid on a directory term? You simply submit your bid in the same manner as you would any search term.
Make sure your title and description are captivating and designed to pull in traffic, and use your keyword phrase in each. Then, after you complete their submission process, wait for approval. Christy explains, “When you first submit terms, an editor will review the terms and approve or disapprove them. If the terms aren’t approved, they will tell you why so you can correct it.” How can you increase your click-through rate? According to Overture’s research, the #1 ranked spot gets clicked on three times as much as the #5 listing. However, keep in mind that captivating titles and descriptions can go a long way toward bringing in business, even if you’re not at the #1 spot. And, by all means use your keyword phrase in your title and description. However, since Overture provides its top 2 or 3 slots to many of the major engines, you need to take that into consideration when deciding what to bid.
As with all other areas of search engine positioning, choosing the right keyword is paramount to boosting traffic. Don’t choose keywords that are too broad, because that traffic probably won’t convert to sales. On the other hand, don’t choose keywords that are too limiting too, or you won’t get any traffic.
Jerry West of WebMarketingNow.com says,
“I recommend choosing only VERY targeted keywords so you get qualified traffic, not those who are ‘just browsing.’ I had a client purchase ‘toys’ and they had a very niche market in the toy industry. They went through $700 in three days and didn’t make one sale.” Robert Woodhead of SelfPromotion.com says, “On Overture.com, you should never take the top listing unless it is dirt cheap.” Woodhead continues, “On very generic keywords, I like to be on page 1 but ‘below the fold,’ so that people have to scroll down to find me. Fewer clicks but they convert well.” “A subtle thing to keep in mind on Overture is that you don’t want to be the top listing; you want to be the top listing for what it is you’re selling. So if you’re selling left-handed monkey wrenches, on the query ‘wrenches’ you only want to be the top listing that mentions ‘left-handed.”
Overture’s Relevancy Police
What if you have a huge advertising budget, and you decide to purchase 100 keywords in unrelated areas simply to boost traffic to your site? Since you’re purchasing keywords, aren’t you able to purchase any keyword that you choose, as long as you’re willing to pay the price?
Answer: Nope.
Overture has a strict guideline pertaining to relevancy which is:
“Advertisers may bid on a search term if their Web site has content that is clearly and obviously reflective of the search term, and their line listing (title and description) accurately describes why their Web site is listed for the search term.” Briefly, their relevancy criteria states that search terms should describe the website itself, must reflect the content of the site, and must be found easily on the site.
Since the relevancy policy is fairly new, Overture has a Quality Assurance Team that is currently going through and checking all areas of the index to make sure that every key term is relevant to the connected website.
What’s to prevent a competitor from clicking on your site over and over again to run up the cost?
A major concern with pay-for-placement subscribers is whether a competitor could spend hours running up the click throughs on their site. To present this from happening, Overture’s security software offers “click protection” against invalid clicking, and it monitors any suspicious activities. If you suspect that someone has utilized invalid clicking on your site, simply report it to Overture, and their Click Activity Team will investigate.
Is there a downside?
With virtually every program, there is a downside, and this is certainly true when it comes to the pay-for-placement engines. One area that generates the most complaints is the increasing costs per click through. Greg Walthour said that back in September, he paid $.06 a hit for “boston real estate,” but it is now $1.26 a hit.
Greg explains,
“Overture has almost gotten too expensive for the little guy. It’s a case of the small guy going against the big guy, and the big guy will eventually win. The key is to get in early. Get in early and get a presence with your keywords because it won’t last forever.” Another major area of complaint takes us back to the original idea of the Internet being a huge free resource for the taking.
Bill Guthrie explains,
“I do not like the concept, and I fail to see how the ability of purchasing ranking is going to improve the overall performance of a particular indexing service or guarantee valid results for a search. I’m afraid the ranking results of a search will become a matter of who has the deepest pockets instead of who has the best information.”
How accurate is their Search Term Suggestion Tool?
Jerry West of WebMarketingNow feels that the information from Overture’s Search Engine Suggestion Tool is misleading. He explains, “I feel Overture.com is VERY misleading in their `number of queries’ they post for the month. We got a top listing for a keyword phrase that stated was pulling over 3,000 queries per month and we got nothing, zero, nada. I find this VERY difficult to swallow that their numbers are legit. Having a #1 for three weeks and zero traffic? With 3100 queries the month before? Did I just buy the Brooklyn Bridge or what?”
In fact, subscribers to WordSpot.com may see totally different results at Overture versus WordSpot, who gets their keyword results from the major meta crawlers and search engine voyeurs. So, when using Overture’s Search Term Suggestion Tool, understand that the results don’t take into consideration distortions created by tools that check rankings or from Overture’s affilate sites. What does this mean when it comes to purchasing keywords through Overture? John Heard of WordSpot says, We’ve found that Overture is a very cost effective service for companies, the cost per click is way below the cost for banner advertising and the leads generally convert well. We advise our clients to review both the Overture Search Term Suggestion Tool and Microsoft’s Bcentral – http://keywords.bcentral.com keyword search quote tool to get a feel for what kind of traffic is being generated for a search term on both engines.
We also suggest driving the leads from pay per click engines to a specific page or url so you can track if the visitors are traveling on into your site. If you find they’re “stopping at the front door” so to speak, then you’re wasting your money on that term, or you’ve been the victim of an automated tool clicking on your links. There are some issues at times with Overture affiliates that pass “fake” traffic to goto because they get paid up to $10.50 per 1000 clicks. Make sure and keep an eye on your stats and watch for large increases in traffic that isn’t traveling into your site.
In closing
If you’re going to try your hand at purchasing a few keywords at Overture, read this article and Overture’s submission guidelines very closely. Pick keywords that will have the best chance of converting to sales, meaning not to choose very general keywords that will run up your click through costs, and not to choose such specific keywords that you’ll get no traffic whatsoever. Start out slowly in terms of money, but choose at least 10 to 20 keywords to start. Monitor your Overture traffic closely as well as through meta search engines such as DogPile. Adjust your strategy accordingly.
Robin Nobles conducts live SEO workshops
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(http://www.onlinewebtraining.com). Localized SEO training is now
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