Two New Advertising Options

 Paid-placement search engine listings, like those at Goto.com,
are great for effective, targeted and low-cost traffic for your
website. That's why so many people are using them, driving up
prices of even obscure terms in bidding. Google's Self-Service
Advertising System, called "Google AdWords," and the "Jeeves Text
Sponsorship Network" are two similar services you should add to
your list of places to advertise.

They can each be effective ways to advertise your site or product
at a low cost, with the added benefit of being CPM-based, meaning
you pay according to the number of impressions of your ad shown
rather than the number of clicks.

Relatively new, Google has decided to offer an easy way to get
your site in their search result pages without spending days or
weeks setting up a banner advertising campaign with them. Unlike
a paid submission, you are not paying to have your site listed in
the Google search results, but to have your ad appear alongside
search results in a special "Sponsored Links" section. Here, to
the right of the search results, your link and a short
description can appear along with up to 8 others for only a few
dollars per thousand impressions.

Because you will be paying $8 to $15 per thousand impressions, or
views of your ad, at Google, you'll need a high click-through
ratio in order to justify spending the money and to get traffic
to your website. Choosing keywords to purchase advertising on
shouldn't be too hard. Assuming you track it, start with the
phrases people are already using to find your website in search
engines. Add to that any other words you want to buy a listing in
that are related to your site, the more specific the better. You
can expect a click-through ratio 3 or 4 times higher for very
specific terms, like "free business cards," as opposed to very
general terms, such as "business".

Once you've chosen the keywords to purchase advertising on, write
ads for each one. You may only need several ads for different
sets of keywords (such as one ad to use for both "free business
cards" and "color business cards" and "business cards"), but you
will probably get better results if you don't use the same ad on
all the terms you are purchasing listings for.

While your ad headline and content are limited to very few words,
you should remember the basic rules for writing ads. Use the
search engine term in the headline of the ad so that the surfer
knows your ad is relevant to their search. Make sure the reason
to visit your site is clearly visible. When your ad is read, the
surfer should know what you have to offer them.

You can read more about the Google AdWords program or sign up at
http://adwords.google.com

Ask.com offers the "Jeeves Text Sponsorship Network," where you
can have your text ad seen alongside search engine results on
participating sites including MSN, Searchalot, Bomis.com,
SuperCyberSearch, and Direct Hit. To see how it works, try
searching the keyword "free" at both AskJeeves.com and one of
the participating sites, DirectHit.com:

http://www.ask.com/main/askjeeves.asp?ask=free
http://www.directhit.com/search.asp?qry=free&alias=websrch

You'll notice, down the right-hand column, several text links.
These are sponsorship links purchased through the Jeeves Text
Sponsorship Network. It works much like the Google AdWords
program except for pricing. At Google, you pay based on the
popularity of your ad, based on the number of click throughs.
The advertiser on any one keyword with the highest click-through
ratio gets the highest spot, and therefore pays the most. With
the Jeeves program, you bid on the space, much like Goto.com.
The difference is you're bidding on CPM, or cost per thousand
impressions, not per click. Bidding starts at only half a cent
per click or $5CPM.

Another benefit of the Jeeves program is that your ad is not as
limited in size as the AdWords program. You get up to 40
characters for your title and 150 characters for your
description. Google limits your ads there to a 25 character
headline and two 35 character lines for a description.

You can learn more about the Jeeves Text Sponsorship Network
or sign up at http://sponsor.directhit.com/

Whether you choose to try AdWords, the Jeeves Text, or both,
these are powerful new ways to invest your advertising dollars
for low-cost, targeted traffic to your website. With rising bids
at paid-placement search engines, these may easily become more
reasonable ways to drive new traffic to your website.

About the Author

Dan Grossman runs http://www.websitegoodies.com where you can
find over 250 hand-picked resources, articles, and tools! Dan
also publishes the free weekly "WebDevPortal" newsletter for
website owners! Subscribe today and get articles like this every
week: mailto:subscribe@webdevportal.com?subject=article-subscribe

 Dan Grossman

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