Buy a top position

As making your site the first one that pops up after a user searches a certain word in a search engine is difficult and sometimes nearly impossible, one often ends up thinking, "isn't there an easier way to grab the top position?" Sure there is, but that way costs money.

In some search engines you can pay to get a higher ranking. GoTo.com for example offers this kind of service. The system is simple: You select a keyword (or keywords) that are related to your site and then you decide how much you're willing to pay for every user that visits your site through GoTo. The more you're willing to pay per user, the higher your listing will appear on the result list when your keyword is searched. The minimum bid is 1 cent per visitor and there's no limits on the amount of keywords you can bid (however, your site must be relevant to the keyword you're bidding on).

Is bidding in GoTo worth it? Yes, if you can get revenues from your visitors in the form of affiliate programs or selling something. If you decide to use GoTo, you should however remember to be careful when bidding. It's easy to start bidding higher and higher to reach the top position and suddenly you notice that you're paying more for each visitor than what the visitors are worth to you. So keep your cool, it's better to have your site in the 20th position and having minimal traffic but making a profit than being in the top position, heavy flow of traffic and losing money! If you feel that you aren't getting enough traffic, try to compensate by adding more keywords, not by raising your bids more than you can handle.

My experiences with GoTo have been positive. There are also other similar services, for example About.com, Searchhound, RocketLinks and FindWhat available. I have not used them so I cannot comment on their quality - if you have advertised with them, why don't you drop me a comment and tell me about your experiences?