Search Engine Submission Tips

Step 4: Pay to bring more visitors to your site.

If you do it right, pay-per-click services can generate a much higher volume of legitimate traffic to your site. Notice... I said legitimate traffic -- qualified leads. If you're not careful, you can spend money for traffice that just honks as it passes you by, never converting into the kind of sales or contacts that you need.

Pay-per-click basically works this way: You bid on certain key words or key phrases. The higher your bid (and, in some cases, the better job you've done at writing copy for your listing), the higher your position will be in the results of searches for that particular word or phrase. (The particular search engines that are involved in the program vary from service to service.) The cool thing is -- you only pay if someone actually clicks through to your site! Depending on the popularity of the keyword, each click may cost as little as 1 cent to a few dollars.

It may take a little time to learn how to do it right, but it can be worth the effort. I would recommend these three pay-per-click services:

• Google's AdWords
  The most popular search engine makes it possible for your "ads" to show up in search results. Bidding can be high on popular keywords.
• Yahoo Seach Marketing
  Previously called Overture, this is the oldest service and very well done. Bidding can get quite high on popular keywords.
• MIVA
  Lower cost and lower traffic volume, but great source for listing popular keywords that cost too much in other services.

For more information about pay per click ads, read the article Effectively Promoting Your Site on Search Engines.

Remember, it's a process that takes time. Even if you follow all these steps, you may not see any significant change in your positioning for weeks or months. But be patient and keep tweaking.. you'll be happy with the results.

Tim Tedder
Designer and Owner, T2Designs