Buy a top position

As it is sometimes difficult or almost impossible to achieve a top position in the search engines for certain keywords, one often ends up thinking "isn't there an easier way to do this?". Well, of course there is, but it isn't free.

If you don't want to hire a professional to optimize your site for you, you can always submit your site to a search engine that sells the top positions instead of selecting them with a complex algorithm. Overture (GoTo) is one example of such an engine and it might be the best of the bunch.

Their system is relatively simple: You select a keyword and decide how much you are willing to pay for each visitor that visits your site through the search results. The more money you can cough up, the higher you will rank on the result list. The only limitation is that your site must be at least vaguely relevant to the keyword you want to bid on.

Making the most out of your money

The cost of the top position depends greatly upon the keyword you are bidding for. For example, the #1 ranking for "ecommerce" at Overture currently costs around $2 per click. At the same time, you could get the #1 position for "boston ecommerce consultant" for a mere 5 cents per click. The latter does not produce as much traffic as the former, but it is a whole lot cheaper. And if you have the time and energy to bid on a bunch of these low-traffic keywords, the combined traffic from them will add up to the level produced by a popular keyword - but at a fraction of the cost.

There are two additional benefits in bidding for the less popular terms. One, the traffic you will receive is targeted better and should result in a better clicks-per-sale rate. Two, Overture has many partners that display the top three results from Overture in their search results. It is hard to grab one of the top three places in popular keywords and still be able to make a profit, but with slightly less competitive keywords, you can get into the top three with a reasonable price and thus have your site displayed on all of the Overture partner sites as well. To find these keywords, I would recommend that you use Overture's own tool for finding keywords and/or Search Engine World's excellent Overture Keyword Interrogator tool.

Does this mean that you should forget the keywords that already have some people bidding for them? Absolutely not. You should bid on every keyword relevant to your site, but at the same time, you have to make sure that you will be making a profit after paying for the traffic. I recommend that you start out slowly with Overture. Investigate how much an average visitor is worth to you and then bid accordingly; the key is not to get carried away. It is better to rank 38th, get a few visitors each day and make a small profit than to rank 1st, get masses of traffic and lose money! If you feel that you aren't getting enough traffic, try to correct the situation by bidding on more keywords, not by increasing your bids so much that you won't be able to turn a profit.

Don't pay any more than you have to

When dealing with pay per click engines such as Overture, it is also important to remember that other bidders are constantly changing their bids. If you can devote the time, checking your listings once in a while and changing your bids to suit the current situation can save you a lot of money, especially if you are bidding for terms that get searched a lot.

For example, I often see situations where the top bid is $1.20 and the second highest bid is $0.75. The guy that is bidding $1.20 in such a situation must be loaded with money, since he could achieve the same ranking with a mere $0.76 per click. I know, 44 cents isn't a lot of money, but if dozens or even hundreds of people click on the listing each day, it adds up pretty fast.

There is a tool for monitoring these "bid gaps" between top positions, but unfortunately it only offers a very limited free trial and you have to pay to get full functionality. Still, if you're bidding on a massive amount of keywords and are short on time, the money spent on that tool might not go to waste. If you only bid on a limited amount of keywords or have time on your hands, you can monitor your rankings manually and save your money.

My experiences with Overture have been mostly positive, and other people I've talked to seem to agree. The only negative thing about Overture is that they have become very popular among siteowners, causing the price for a top position in certain keywords to rise. Still, even at the current prices, they (in my opinion) beat the hell out of banner advertising.

There are also other similar services, for example About.com's Sprinks, Searchhound, Ah-ha and FindWhat available. I have not used them so I cannot comment on their quality, but I'll be testing them in the coming months.