Overture Pay Per Click Search Engine Submission Overture

Overture - A Can't Lose Pay Per Click Search Engine Marketing Strategy

This article provides a quick list of improper search engine optimization practices. You can use it as a checklist if you perform search engine optimization yourself.

The absolute quickest surefire way that I know of to get instant website traffic is using pay-per-click search engines. You bid on the search terms of your choice and as soon as your account is set up they start sending traffic your way. I use a variety of pay per click but Overture Search Engine Submission is my favorite. Today I'd like to show you how and why I use them.

With regular search engines, you can't really "tell" them what terms you want to be listed under. With pay per click search engines, you get to specify exactly what terms you'd like to be listed under. At Overture and some of the others, the staff does review your listing to confirm it is appropriate. If your listing is appropriate, you get listed under the term you want to attract targeted traffic with, and you get to specify how you would like your listing to read.

There *are* less expensive ways of getting traffic to your site. However, it is not as tightly controlled. Overture's minimum bid is 10 cents per click. With many terms, that's all you need to bid to appear in the top listings (even at number 1). Controlling exactly how your listing appears ensures you spend your money attracting only the traffic you want. It also ensure that you discourage the type of traffic that you don't want.

I'll give you an example for illustration. I have a site that sells a "soul food cookbook." I want the traffic I attract to this site to be interested in obtaining a soul food cookbook.... especially if I am paying for this traffic. So I use that phrase or a related phrase in my Overture listing. I also use it in my title and the description. I tell them exactly what they will find on my website in my listing. Traffic attracted through these listings are seeking "soul food cookbooks" so they buy my product!

In deciding how much to bid on a pay-per-click term you must know your conversion rate. You need to know how many sales each dollar generates. For example, I spend an average of $1 on Overture traffic for each sale that I make from this traffic. I sell a $20 cookbook and my profit margin is sufficient to make this campaign smart business. The traffic from Overture also generates 4 signups to my website recipe exchange mailing list for each dollar I spend. It could be much higher but I land the traffic on a webpage focused on making the sale rather than getting new subscribers. A very high percentage of these subscribers will eventually purchase either my cookbook or a related product.

A spill over effect of this pay-per-click campaign is that my Overture submission gets me a top listing on many other search engines. Overture's paid listing feed the search results at Yahoo!, MSN, InfoSpace, Lycos, Alta Vista and Netscape. This spillover drives incredible traffic to my sites. For example, my traffic from MSN nearly doubled with one of my Overture submission campaigns. Microsoft is the default homepage for a lot of internet users (since it is the default browser pre-installed on a lot of computers), and having a top listing with them is well worth the expense.

When setting up an account at Overture, the most important thing you can do is to make sure you are targeting the right keyword phrases and that you really finess your listing. You want customers to arrive at your site ready to buy your product or join your list. You don't want curiosity seekers when you arepaying for traffic. You don't want to get "cute" with your listings since attracting the wrong visitors really does no one any good. It might even generate a lot of complaints.

Overture has a tool you can use to investigate what keywords were searched on the most - recently. I use this tool but I also subscribe to a service that emails me the top 500 most searched terms every week. They send me weekly reports and I build mini sites around these terms. I sometimes funnel traffic from these mini sites to other topical sites. Some mini sites I also design as direct sales sites. Both strategies will work well for you if properly employed.

A properly designed pay per click campaign is a can't loose proposition. You know that for every $100 spent exactly how much you can expect to earn. The only variable in the formula for me is how fast Overture can send me this traffic. You do want to bid the minimum bid possible to get the listing you want. You don't need to be number 1 since it is the words in your listing that really generates the click. I do consider being one of the top 3 bidders very important.

I also keep my mini sites' costs down by hosting my keyword rich domain names on quality, low-costs hosts. I use a web host that allows you to host additional domains for only $5 per domain. You do have to have at least one domain hosted on their regular $25 per month plan (500 meg of space and full-featured). Then you can host as many additional domains as you want for only an extra $5 each. This makes building a series of mini sites related to the theme of your product or main site so affordable you really should use this business strategy.

I've just given you a very brief overview of one of my pay per click strategies. Using this strategy, I routinely turn every thousand dollars invested into over $10,000. With the right product or service, you can too.

Willie Crawford has taught thousands the secrets of operating a successful on-line business through his free Internet Business Success Course. It's more extensive than many $197 courses. Sign up today and start building your *successful* online business: www.williecrawford.com