Pay Per Listing Is Not The Same As Pay Per Click

Submitting to search engines was up today mostly free, but many people expect to pay for being included, so this is changing day by day.

Now some search engines and directories think that if you want to be included in their listings, you must pay for it!

Does this mean that they will end up with free submissions?

Not necessary.

Search engines need to deliver a good service if they want to be visited. If you design a site that has a very good content, people will want to know about it, and search engines will want to have you on their list. Even if you don't pay a cent per listing!

And if Search engines become too commercialized, people will end up going somewhere else.

A customer wants to find places that deliver good content about the keyword he's looking for, and won't be happy to find many places not so well related to what he's looking for, that are there just because they have paid to be there.

The first thing you must be aware of is that Pay per listing DOES NOT mean that you will be included in Search engine's listings, or that you will receive a shred of traffic!

Pay per listing means that you pay to make them consider including your site, and they will only include it, if your content meets their requirements.

If they include you in their listing, the traffic you will receive will depend on how high your pages rank! So you still have to optimize them to make your keywords and keyword phrases rank high. And you need to do it more than ever because it's costing you money to be listed!

IS IT WORTHWHILE TO PAY PER LISTING (or pay for inclusion)?

If you business isn't on line, it might be the fastest way to get tons of visitors to your site

If you already are on line and your log files tell you that you are already receiving many visitors from Yahoo, then you don't need to pay to be listed with Yahoo

If you used to receive lots of visitors from Yahoo, and somehow you disappear from their listing, it will be very wise to pay to be listed again

You can never know how many visitors you will receive from a search engine if you never appear on their listing

Have you got so many visitors that you don't care if they include you or not? (I think that NO ONE can answer yes to this question).

Bottom line: If you are opening a new business and are short of money, you can try other traffic builders first, but...

If you are really serious about your business...

Pay per listing can be a very good idea!

WHERE SHOULD YOU PAY PER LISTING?

The most important places you should look to be listed are:

* LookSmart: www dot looksmart dot com/ They provide their directory results to: AltaVista, MSN, Excite, CNN and others, and claim to have more traffic than Yahoo.

Is it worth paying for their listing? Considering their size, I think they are.

* Yahoo: www dot yahoo dot com/ It's indeed one of the strongest SE of the Net and I don't think it could be a wise decision NOT to be in it.

* Inktomi: www dot inktomi dot com/ Inktomi provides search services to more than 100 partners, some of them so important as MSN, HotBot, AOL and Answers.

Although you can submit your web site for free to Inktomi through HotBot.com or Canada.com they penalize free submissions with a lower ranking!

If you don't have the money it's better to free submit than to be out of their index, but it's better to let them discover you with their spider (that will give you a higher rank)

Free submissions are deleted from time to time, so if you DO have the money it's better to pay for some of your most popular pages (they charge for each one of them) and see how much traffic you receive.

Another good thing about Inktomi is that if you pay, you will be in their listing in 48 hs.

To submit your web site to Inktomi, you will have to use some of their paid submission partners

* Position Technologies: www dot positiontech dot com/ will charge you $20 for the first page and $ 10 for pages 2-1000
* Network Solutions: www dot networksolutions dot com/en_US/catalog/searchsubmit/ Will charge you $ 30 and $ 15 for similar service, but they will allow you many special services like:

* You can change the URLs on your listings at any time
* You can add new pages and drop other pages
* You can use multiple domains' URLs

At this moment, you can live without the service of other less important paid Search Engines and Directories.

Bottom line: Why should you consider pay per listing? Because otherwise people won't find your site, unless you are the Ford Motors Company or Coca-Cola.

Lets suppose you sell a back massage widget. How will people that DON'T know you find you on the net?

They will go to one of the major Search Engines and make a search for "back massage" or "massages", and you better be included and rank high on those terms if you want them to find you.

So if you are not Coca-Cola, you might want to consider being discovered on The Net.

Click-To-Call Better Than Pay-Per-Click

One of the most effective methods of marketing your business online is using one of the many pay per click advertising programs such as Google AdWords, Yahoo! Advertising, or Microsoft AdCenter. With these programs, your advert is displayed on the search engine results page for a query that you specify, and then users have the choice of clicking through to your website for more information or to make a purchase.

An example of this might be a florist who agrees to pay $1 each time someone who searches for flowers using Google clicks on their advert. Each time a user makes the click, the advertiser pays up, meaning that they only get traffic to their website that is interested in the product.

Of course, there are several drawbacks to this method of advertising. For example, there are cases where people who have no intention of buying a service click on the advert, which then costs money for no benefit. Another problem comes from the website itself. If it is poorly designed, or does not work hard enough to convert the prospect into a sale, then the money spent on advertising is wasted. A third drawback comes if the customer is not quite ready to buy, in which case the advertiser may have to pay several times for the same user as they return.

Perhaps the best alternative to Pay-Per-Click advertising is Click-To-Call. Using this particular model, every time a user clicks on an advert, they are connected to the advertiser over the phone. This can be achieved using a VOIP service like SkyPe, and is also available on mobile phone networks, in which case the phone is diverted from the web onto a voice call when an advert is selected.

The advantages of click to call are enormous. You are able to answer the questions of the buyer and convert them into a sale more effectively than a website, can avoid the problems of click fraud that are opened up by the pay per click model, because every call connects, and because you are able to take over the client’s attention completely, you are less likely to lose them to a competitor than if they are allowed to surf the web. All of this makes your conversion rate potentially much higher with Click-To-Call rather than Pay-Per-Click.

The newest click-to-call provider, Radiux (http://www.radiux.com) offers unlimited inbound calls for one flat fee and might be the best solution for budget conscious business owners.

Conclusion: for most businesses click-to-call IS the better solution over pay-per-click, although you might want to keep your pay-per-click campaign for a while in addition to your new pay-per-call solution.

What Do You Want To Pay Today? Pay Per Click Overview

In the sphere of advanced Pay Per Click (PPC) strategies it is possible to compartmentalize your tactics to enhance overall performance while minimizing costs.

What that means is you can decide how you want to use Pay Per Click and when you want to use it.

Pay per Click is a feature of two companies, Overture and Google Adwords. These firms allow you to bid on targeted advertising. The more money you are willing to spend in PPC advertising the more often your advertisement will come up on higher ranking websites. The price you bid is the price you pay for every visitor to your website that was directed through Pay Per Click.

You could pay for the management of your PPC advertising, but with a little research you should be able to manage your own account without too many difficulties.

When you sign up as a client for PPC you fill out information about what keywords or phrases you are seeking to target. You also devise a brief advertisement generally consisting of text only (this text can be altered at any time). You also include the web address you need the PPC link to send customers to.

Strategies for experienced users of Pay Per Click allow you to place your bid based on the Return on Investment (ROI) performance. This allows for ad price adjustments based on the purchasing performance of your visitors.

Some PPC clients will maximize certain time frames and turn off advertising during other parts of the day. By doing a little research and conducting some initial micromanaging many PPC customers are finding they are better able to increase their ROI.

If you are concerned that there may be more potential clients that will use PPC it is possible to place a cap on the maximum clicks you are willing to pay for in a day. When that click count is reached the ad is removed from circulation.

If the idea of PPC is new to you it is possible you may wonder where these ads are placed.

Your PPC ads will show up on potentially hundreds and even thousands of websites that provide information or services on the keyword or phrases you've chosen. These sites have elected to place these ads in exchange for a commission on any PPC that originates from their site. This commission is managed by the PPC company you are dealing with and is not an added expense to you.

For many web owners this is a win-win situation. They are confident your product has a tie to what they offer and when someone clicks on your link the web owner gains some residual income. In some cases that income more than pays for the costs associated with operating their website.

How To Turn Pay-Per-Click Into Profit-Per-Click

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising is a very powerful avenue for obtaining targeted, high-quality traffic for your website. Not only can you build your customer list and increase your sales, but you can also reach new and international customers who otherwise would not be reached by your traditional advertising.

If you can properly utilize the power of PPC, then your business will reap the rewards. However, due to the competitive nature of hundreds of businesses seeking the same keywords, PPC can quickly become financially disastrous. The benefits of Pay-Per-Click can be easily turned into Profit-Per-Click, but only if you possess the right understandings and tools.

Understanding The Business Fundamentals of PPC

1.Evaluate your targeted customer and understand their motivations. Are your customers driven by savings? Are they seeking a premium product that is hard-to-find in the stores? What other competitor products are your targeted customers purchasing?

2.Review your competition. Who are the most successful competitors in your industry? What are the most popular items they are selling to your targeted customers? What PPC keywords are they employing? There are effective PPC management tools, such as ZamDoo.com, that specifically show you which of your competitors’ keywords are ROI successes or failures, the wording of their ad campaigns, and even what times your competitors are running their PPC advertisements.

3.Research your keywords! Conducting in-depth, relevant research is critical to ensuring that you possess the accurate keywords for your target audience. For example, if you own a cosmetics website, you want to ensure that individuals who are looking for “natural make-up” click through, not businesses looking for wholesale “beauty supplies.” ZamDoo can help you research specific keywords, average PPC costs across the search engines, and determine potential ROI.

4.Create a financial budget and stick to it. With PPC, the costs can escalate quickly. Make sure you create a budget that is appropriate for your finances. You can always start with a smaller budget and then increase it. ZamDoo provides you with easy-to-manage financial information that tracks all of your PPC spending and ROI. In addition, you can run free trials of your keywords through ZamDoo’s Web Crawl Test.

5.Select the targeted keywords that are best for your business. With PPC, the more specific your keyword is, the higher-quality traffic you will receive. Utilizing ZamDoo can help you discover not only niche keywords, but also the ones that have the least amount of competition; therefore, you obtain targeted traffic at affordable PPC prices.

6.Be smart when you bid on PPC. PPC bidding can quickly escalate and cause you to pay unnecessarily high prices. Make sure that you understand your ROI on each keyword and how much you are willing to pay for the potential conversions. Utilizing software like ZamDoo helps you keep track of the PPC bidding levels, as well as easily find other keywords that are just as effective, but with lower PPC costs.

7.Fresh copy is key! Although you may have the best targeted keywords, your potential customer will not click through to your website unless your PPC ad is compelling. Research the ads your competitors are writing to understand how you can write better ones. In addition, it is important to run different ads, monitor their click-through-ratios and conversions, and adjust accordingly. Use ZamDoo to effectively manage the different ad copy campaigns you are utilizing to find the ones that are most successful. In addition, ZamDoo will give you the insight of the successful or not-so-successful ads your competitors are running in the same keywords.

8.Create customized landing pages for your keywords. The landing page is one of the most important factors of increasing conversions from your PPC. If your landing page is not targeted for your keyword, then your conversions will suffer. It is a great idea to test several landing pages for you keywords. ZamDoo makes it easy to manage all your landing pages for your keywords, as well as monitor which ones are the best in conversions.

9.Review your results constantly. To make the most out of your PPC campaign, it is critical to continuously evaluate the effectiveness of your keywords and landing pages for ROI. ZamDoo’s powerful platform helps you easily keep track of all your campaigns and their returns, thus saving you time and money.

By implementing the nine business fundamentals of PPC, you are well on your way to creating profitable campaigns for your online business. With the help of ZamDoo, you can quickly turn Pay-Per-Click to Profit-Per-Click with their excellent management tools that save you both time and money.

Click Fraud: A Guide To Protecting Your Pay-Per-Click Campaign

Click fraud is the latest 'hot topic' circulating the online marketing arena, but what is it? And how does it affect you as a merchant running a pay-per-click campaign?

Spending on Internet advertising is growing faster than any other sector of the advertising industry and is expected to surge from $12.5 billion last year to $29 billion by 2010 in the U.S. alone, according to the researcher eMarketer Inc. With around 50% of this spending being spent on pay-per-click (PPC) advertising.

Here we offer you a complete guide as to what this phenomenon is, who is likely to commit such an act, how to identify & prevent click fraud and how to best report instances of suspected click fraud on your PPC campaign.

What is Click Fraud?

According to Wikipedia "Click fraud is a type of internet crime that occurs in pay per click online advertising when a person, automated script, or computer program imitates a legitimate user of a web browser clicking on an ad, for the purpose of generating a charge per click without having actual interest in the target of the ad's link"

Click Fraud is estimated to range from 5% - 15% of pay-per-click traffic (some estimates are as high as 20% - 35%) although Google estimates click fraud at only 2% due to the rigorous detection methods they claim are in place.

In a recent study by Click Forensics, click fraud reached a new high of 14.2% in the last quarter of 2006 with the average rate of click fraud on 'content networks' as high as 19.2% for the same quarter.

So who is likely to commit Click Fraud?

The click fraud villain is most likely to fall into one of three categories:

- Online vandals with nothing better to do than cause a nuisance

- A competitor clicking on your search network PPC ads, with the sole intention of increasing your cost-per-acquisition (CPA). This could be interpreted as click fraud, although currently the search engines do not consider this kind of activity as click fraud

- Search Engine advertising affiliates who generate self-income from fraudulent clicks on 'content network' adverts displayed on their own websites. This practice, at it's extreme, involves the use of unscrupulous 'paid to read' or PTR sites, which are basically click-fraud rings, some with hundreds or thousands of participants, paid to click on your ads with no regard for your return on investment (ROI) as the advertiser

What are the Search Engines doing about it?

Both Google and Yahoo claim that they filter out most fraudulent clicks. The costs involved for these clicks are either not charged or are reimbursed to advertisers who have been wrongly billed.

To combat click fraud Google applies four layers of fraud detection:

1. Automatic detection - this filters clicks from both the search and content networks in real-time with the goal of removing them before their existence is ever shown to the advertiser

2. The "Flagging system" - an automatic process to remove invalid AdSense clicks

3. The "Manual review" - this process has more than two-dozen Google employees tasked with manually reviewing and removing any suspicious AdSense clicks

4. If the first three layers of protection fail then the fourth and final layer of click fraud detection falls to the advertiser and 3rd party click fraud detection companies. Google refers to this layer as "requested investigations"

Googles main aim is that the first three layers of filtering will identify all invalid and fraudulent clicks. These layers currently filter more than 98% of invalid clicks.

And should you be in any doubt, both Google and Yahoo have, in the past, released the following statements:

"We think click fraud is a serious but manageable issue" says John Slade, Yahoo's senior director for global product management.

"Google strives to detect every invalid click that passes through its system" says Shuman Ghosemajumder, the Google manager for trust and safety. "It's absolutely in our best interest for advertisers to have confidence in this industry."

As a positive for the future, Google is currently testing a cost-per-action (CPA) platform, which should effectively deal with click fraud. With CPA ads you don't pay by the click but instead pay when the customer reaches a certain goal: buys a product, fills an enquiry, etc.

How to identify click fraud on your pay-per-click campaign

Before you can even contemplate identifying click fraud you must have effective tracking tools implemented on your website and, if possible, access to your server logs. With tracking tools in place, the most obvious way of spotting click fraud is to simply observe any spikes in traffic where there is no particular shift in your conversions.

Once identified, these spikes can then be analysed by looking for repeated clicks from sources that look similar. This similarity could be an IP address or an IP range; it could be a combination of IP range; browser version; operating system. Basically look for data in groups that looks fraudulent.

If all this is just 'a bit too heavy' for you then there are a number of companies out there that can help.

- AdWatcher: claims to able to spot click fraud so that you can report it. Covers other aspects of PPC marketing, by helping you track your ROI, email success, etc.

- Click Auditor: offers the ability to check whether your competitors IP is the one performing any abusive clicking, and says it will stealthily gather your competitors IP addresses for this purpose

- ClickSentinel: focuses on helping you get refunds on fraudulent clicks, as requesting a refund from your PPC provider can often be very difficult for the un-initiated

- Click Tracks: reportedly has automatic click fraud reporting along with other click tracking (analytics) tools

Reporting suspected Click Fraud

When reporting suspected click fraud, you must include as much captured data as possible to increase your likelihood of obtaining a refund or credit.

The following guidelines are recommended:

- Clearly state, at the very beginning of your claim, that you are reporting suspected click fraud

- Provide a full explanation to support your claim

- Include your account details (do not include your password or payment information)

- State the exact keyword, ad and campaign where you suspect click fraud has occurred

- State the exact time, date and IP address of each instance of suspected click fraud. This data can be gleaned from your server logs or 3rd party tracking tool

- Finally, state whether you are requesting a refund, credit or investigation

If you were using any software tools, such as those highlighted earlier, to help you track and report click fraud then include any reports generated by these in your claim.

Lowering the risk of Click Fraud happening to you!

Always bear in mind that your PPC objective is to get conversions and not just clicks.

The more you have researched the demographics of your intended client base the better your chance of avoiding click fraud. Are your clients from a specific country or location? When are they likely to search for your product or service? What are the key search-terms they are using?

With demographic data in-hand you can target your ad campaigns more effectively and lower your risk of click fraud.