Pay Per Click Search Engine Reviews :: Increase your ROI!

Online Marketing: Pay-Per-Click Search Engines

By Aaron Turpen of Aaronz WebWorkz

A Pay-Per-Click search engine (also called Pay-Per-Ranking

engines) allows you to place your site at the top of their

results almost immediately. This comes at a price, though.

The idea is pretty simple. You put in a “bid” for how much

you’re willing to pay per click-through on certain keywords

- the higher your bid, the higher you appear in the results

for that keyword. A click-through is when a searcher

clicks on your link in the engine and comes to your site.

Regardless of whether this searcher purchases anything or

not, you pay for them to come to your site.

The advantages of this type of system are obvious: they

drive users to your site starting almost immediately and

the amount of traffic can be fairly high with those

visiting being likely to be looking for what you offer

(these are targeted users). Some PPCs even send results

to Yahoo! and other big directories (GoTo/Overture is an

example of this).

In the short run this is a good marketing tool and useful

to those impatient to get their site noticed quickly.

Usually, you log into a PPC engine, open an account and

deposit money into it. Then you put in your site infor-

mation along with your bid for certain keywords, which

will drive people to your site. This bid is what you are

willing to pay for EVERY click-through you receive. So

even $100 can go fairly quickly if you’re in a high-traffic

area of the ‘Net.

Try to stick with the better-known names in PPCs and be

wary of those that offer their surfers incentives to click

on links - this is not conducive to “targeted” traffic.

Also watch the engine’s use-ability and function. If it

isn’t easy to use, nobody is using it and you’re wasting

your time signing up there. You can rarely get your

deposit back from the search engine once it’s been made.

Below is a list of popular pay-per-click search engines in

alphabetical order. Many are not listed here, obviously,

but I thought I would list a few and touch on some of

their finer points to show you how a PPC can be used

effectively.

Brainfox (www.brainfox.com): This is a decent, though

relatively new PPC that offers itself as a budget altern-

ative. Minimum bids are .001 cents! Not sure of the

results of advertising here, but it may be worth a try

since you only need to invest $5 to get started.

CleanSearch (www.cleansearch.com): Although not widely

known, this is one of the few PPCs that focus on “family”

results (no porn). You even have the option of “reporting”

on results that appear to have them reviewed for content.

eFind (www.efind.com): This is a good example of a PPC you

should NOT advertise with. Built like a slot machine, this

one is set up to send users to paid listings in order to be

entered to win prizes. Avoid these guys.

FindWhat (www.findwhat.com): I originally was not going to

include this engine as they used to pay their searchers to

go to advertiser’s sites, but that seems to have changed.

This may become a good engine in the future!

GoClick (www.goclick.com): This is a good engine and has a

great explanation “help” FAQ to get new users going. It’s

reasonably priced and has some nice tools integrated to

keep your bidding competitive.

GoTo/Overture (www.overture.com): This is the premier PPC

engine. They offer shopping and auction sites (as per

Yahoo!), but you’ll need money to be competitive here. If

you can afford it, this one is well worth the money.

Metamission (www.metamission.com): This allows you to

advertise on their “metasearch” engine. I’m dubious about

their results, especially when seeing the “too good to be

true” 1000% bonus to your first credit deposit with them.

NetFlip (www.netflip.com): This is another bad example of a

search engine gone awry. They pay users to click through

and have become quite popular despite the lack of focused

users they send to their advertisers.

Onesearch (www.onesearch.com): This is a good engine,

though fairly boring to look at. They have a low minimum

account requirement ($25 as of this writing) and offer

pretty good results.

Searchhound (www.searchhound.com): This is one of the

premier PPCs and their price and minimum account sizes

reflect this. If you have the money to spend, though, you

will probably get more traffic here than on any of the

other engines.

Sprinks (www.sprinks.com): This is an easy-to-use engine

that offers to get you listed in About.com as well. You

may have good results here.

Turbo10 (www.turbo10.com): This is a great search engine

with lots of neat bonuses for the users. Searching for

exactly what you want is easy and you can jump around the

search results as you wish-giving the user total power.

I suspect that this will get more and more popular as time

goes on and this use-ability will only enhance your

listing here.

Overall, especially in the short run, Pay-Per-Click engines

are a useful tool for marketing online. They require a

little money to be used effectively and many require daily

or weekly policing to ensure that you are not outbid and

therefore ranked too low. The trouble can be worth it,

though, as you drive more and more visitors (usually

targeted!) to your site. As an alternative to getting

listed in regular engines and directories, PPCs are very

viable.

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Aaron Turpen is the proprieter of Aaronz WebWorkz, a full-

service provider of Web needs to small businesses.

www.AaronzWebWorkz.com