Burf.com

By Bill Platt, the Phantom Writers© 2006

These days, all search engine optimization gurus only seem to
talk about Google, as if Google was the only search engine on
the Internet.

Of course, we all know that there really are hundreds of search
engines and directories available to us, and we know that some
of the smaller search engines serve a very tight niche of users.

Honestly, I can understand why there is a lot of press on Google,
because after all, granddaddy Google is the biggest of the big.
We know that millions of people use Google daily for their search
activities, and we know that our websites receive a lot of
traffic from Google.

There are actually four reasons why you would want to extend your
search engine marketing activities beyond Google. I will discuss
each of those reasons here:

Reason #1: Targeted Traffic

Niche content search engines can be a very powerful force in
your marketing arsenal.

For example, suppose you have a website dedicated to helping
sell real estate. Does it make better sense to list a house for
sale in Google or in one of the many real estate search engines?

Let’s face facts. When we look for tightly focused content such
as real estate listings, we generally seek out a search engine
that will serve our search the best. When searching for a new
home, an individual may begin his or her search at Google to find
the real estate search engines, but once the niche search engine
has been found, there is no need or desire to return to
granddaddy Google. The real estate search engine will allow the
individual to search through cities and neighborhoods, prices,
features and pictures, to find just the house they feel might
strike their fancy.

Even in the game of Internet marketing, a niche content search
engine or directory can be a very powerful addition to your
marketing portfolio. It is only a matter of searching out and
locating the niche content search engine or directory that serves
your particular niche the best.

Reason #2: Costs Management

The Big Three have each developed their own pay-per-click search
models. And, because they are the Big Three search engines, they
can also afford to charge advertising rates that permit them to
be among the most profitable enterprises on the Internet.

The perception of pay-per-click pricing at the Big Three is that
the little guy can afford to advertise with them. But with every
Internet marketer on the web trying to compete for Big Three
search traffic, their five cents per-click easily increases to
sixty cents per-click, and in some industries, it can climb to
five or fifty dollars per-click.

The pay-per-click “auction mentality” really kicks into hyper-
overdrive in some industries. And the Big Three eat it up, as do
their stockholders. Each day, they dance their way to the bank
with your money in tow.

The smaller niche search engines may not serve as much traffic,
but they definitely allow you to reach more people for the same
money. You can reach people who are more inclined to buy your
goods and services, because they were searching on a niche
website, and you can get their traffic for a lot less money than
it would cost you to get the same prospect from any of the Big
Three search engines.

Reason #3: Linking for Google Placement

For those of you who are still involved in the Google PageRank
chase, the smaller search directories can be counted on as a
really valuable asset in your linking portfolio.

Many of the smaller search directories carry some pretty decent
PageRank with them.

For example:

• Blog-Search.com carries a PR6.
• Search66.com carries a PR6.
• GoArticles.com carries a PR6.
• SearchWarp.com carries a PR5.
• SitesOnDisplay.com carries a PR5.
• SearchRamp.com carries a PR5.
• MixCat.com carries a PR5.
• TorontoMalls.com carries a PR5.
• OutdoorHits.com carries a PR4.

• FindYourForum.com carries a PR4.

  As you are already aware, the PageRank of a website that is
  pointing to your website plays a role in determining the value of
  your own website in the Google PageRank calculations, thereby
  increasing your chances of gaining ground in the Google SERP’s
  (Search Engine Result Pages).

  Targeted directories pass their PageRank value to the websites
  that list with them, which is great for your website.
  Additionally, getting placed into these directories is often
  cheaper and easier to accomplish, than with any other method of
  linking for the purposes of increasing PageRank.

  Reason #4: Extra Traffic

  Yahoo, MSN, WindSeek.com, ExactSeek.com, and many others are
  making changes, improving their results, and trying to position
  themselves to compete toe-to-toe with Google or to compete for
  searchers not happy with Google’s search product (yes, there are
  actually people out there who do not like to use Google). These
  non-Google engines are currently serving millions of additional
  searches a day or month.

  The Big Three: Google, Yahoo and MSN only served 73% of the
  Internet’s search traffic in July 2005
  (http://searchenginewatch.com/reports/article.php/3099931), and
  81% of the search traffic in November of 2005
  (http://searchenginewatch.com/reports/article.php/2156451). These
  percentages are based on a rough estimation of just over 5
  billion searches per month.

  Even on the November 2005 numbers, search engines that are NOT in
  the Big Three are delivering 950 million searches per month. That
  is a lot of additional traffic!

  If your search engine marketing activities are focused only on
  the Big Three, or even worse, only on granddaddy Google, you are
  throwing away anywhere from 20% to 53% of your potential customer
  base!

  Locating The Smaller Search Engines and Directories…

  Here are a few resources that can help to find hundreds of the
  smaller search engines and directories that may be available to
  you:

  Independent Search Engine & Directory Network – http://www.isedn.org/

  Yahoo Search Engine & Directory Listings – http://dir.yahoo.com/Computers_and_Internet/Internet/
  World_Wide_Web/Searching_the_Web/Search_Engines_and_Directories/

  International Directory of Search Engines – http://www.searchenginecolossus.com/

  Small Search Engines and Directories Really Do Matter…

  I have just outlined four reasons why the smaller search engines
  and niche directories should matter to those of us who market our
  goods and services on the Internet. I have also given you a
  starting point for locating these excellent search websites.

  Sure, it might take a little bit more time to get listed in these
  smaller resources, but if you calculate how much time you spend
  developing your positioning in the Big Three, then it really is
  not that much of a time investment after all.

  The smaller directories can help us to improve our Google
  PageRank. They can help us to get more mileage from our
  advertising dollars than what we can get from the Big Three.
  They allow us to tap into additional sources of targeted traffic
  with a real potential for increasing our sales and profits. And,
  the best reason to use the smaller search engines and directories
  is that they actually serve another 950 million searches a month.
  ============================================================
  Bill Platt is the owner of http://thePhantomWriters.com
  Article Distribution Service. He has been ghost writing for
  clients since 1999, and he has been distributing client articles
  since 2001. Bill regularly maintains his database of submission
  resources, and he applies the human touch to every article
  distribution. By reviewing every article and manually selecting
  where it will be distributed, publishers and webmasters trust
  that he will send only the most appropriate articles to them.
  ============================================================

  Copyright © 2006 Jayde Online, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

  SiteProNews is a registered service mark of Jayde Online, Inc.

By Mark Daoust© 2006

Starting a website used to be relatively easy. Register a domain
name, get a virtual hosting account, setup a basic looking
website, then choose from the literally hundreds of marketing
agencies that were willing to send traffic to your site for a
relatively small price. A lot has changed since 1999 on the
Internet, and maybe nothing so much as the way we market our
websites.

Some may be tempted to say that marketing has become easier in
today’s Internet. We know more about user’s expectations and
are able to better target our ads to users who are interested in
our websites. Through programs such as Google Adsense and
Yahoo’s Contextual Marketing programs, we can be relatively
certain that the clicks for which we pay are from people who are
actually interested in our programs (of course there are issues
of click fraud, but that is not the focus of this article).

But because our advertising choices have been effectively
slimmed down to just a few major ad networks, finding a great
deal in advertising has become much harder. Every website owner
is rushing to the major ad networks which creates a scarcity of
ad spots. The result is that ad prices are being driven up – and
your profits are being driven down.

After a little research, however, I learned that the small,
upstart, great value advertising options had not died. It gave
me hope that the good things of the early Internet could still
be alive in today’s webbed world.

Advertising on Blogs

Blogs are big. There is no doubt about it – everyone is starting
a blog. My wife even started a blog last month
(http://www.thelazywife.com – please excuse the shameless
promotion of her blog) with the hope of making a little side
income. Blogs are relatively easy to setup and maintain, and
with so many people talking about blogging successes, they have
become an attractive option for those looking to bring in an
additional income.

This is good for advertisers. The blogging boom has created a
buyers market for advertising. Most bloggers are trying to make
money from contextual advertising and are seeing some levels of
success, but most would like to see more money from their blogs.
The result for the rest of us is that buying ads on blogs can
bring quite a bit of traffic without having to pay a great deal
of money.

If you need proof of this, just head on over to BlogAds
(http://www.blogads.com/). BlogAds is an invitation-only network
of blogs offering advertising on their websites. Each site is
categorized which allows advertisers to target their ads. The
best feature of BlogAds, however, is the ability to not only see
the site that you will be advertising on, but also the ability
to see the site itself as well as how much estimated traffic
that site will receive while your ad is live.

Some of the prices are more expensive, but if you choose wisely
and create a decent ad, seeing an effective clickthrough cost of
$0.05 to $0.10 is attainable. For my wife’s blog we purchased
several ads across a handful of targeted blogs. Currently we are
on pace to seeing an effective clickthrough rate of about
$0.05/click. That is effective advertising.

There are other blog ad networks besides BlogAds, and many blog
owners would be happy to accept an advertiser if you were to
approach them. The traffic on blogs is real, and with the number
and popularity of blogs, finding a good advertising deal is not
too difficult.

Finding Upstart Ad Networks

One of the beautiful things about the late 1990’s was the sheer
volume of upstart ad agencies. Although none of these groups
were able to generate the traffic that any of the mega agencies
of today are able to generate, these upstarts usually were able
to provide solid traffic for a true bargain in an attempt to woo
new advertisers.

Upstart ad networks, although a lot less visible today than they
once were, can be found in a multitude of ways. They usually do
not have a lot of press around them, and they probably have only
a few quality websites in their network, but they do exist and
they can be a good advertising outlet. More and more these
networks are focusing on vertical markets (such as an ad network
that deals only with Internet marketing). To find a network like
this, you should familiarize yourself with the major websites in
your industry. Pay attention to who is serving their advertising
(you can usually figure this out by viewing the source of the
page) and check the rates of advertising. Most of the time you
will find a major ad network behind the ad, but from time to
time you can find an absolute steal.

New Search Networks

With Google Adsense, Yahoo Marketing, and the upcoming MSN Ad
Center (in Beta), it would be reasonable to assume that search
engine marketing has turned into a virtual oligopoly.
Thankfully, this is not the case. Not only are there new types
of search engines being formed that will undoubtedly challenge
search as we know it, there are traditional search networks that
offer legitimate advertising options.

The ISEDN (http://store.exactseek.com/) is a group of smaller
search engines and directories that have banded together to
offer advertisers an alternative to the more expensive search
engine options. Although the traffic of the current 165+ search
engines that make up the ISEDN (Independent Search Engine &
Directory Network) is not at the level of the major search
networks, the group still boasts a fairly impressive search
volume of over 150 million monthly searches.

Most people would avoid advertising on a small search engine
like many of the ones found in the ISEDN because off the lack of
search volume as well as the question of whether the vendors are
offering legitimate traffic. However, as a group, the ISEDN is
able to leverage their traffic, remove the incentive of offering
bad traffic by offering their ads for a flat fee
($4/keyword/month – minimum 3 months), and offer an ad product
that can theoretically reduce an advertiser’s cost to an
insignificant level. This may be one of the reasons that the
network sees the majority of its advertisers renew after the
first three months.

In addition to search networks like the ISEDN, alternatives to
search engines are starting to gain steam. Websites such as
Digg.com, Del.icio.us, and Wikipedia are changing the way we
find information on the Internet. While these are not a pure
replacement for search engines, they are becoming a very popular
way to find new websites. Most of these new social network
websites do not currently offer advertising, but these could
provide a very good alternative to the major search networks in
the near future.

Be Crazy – Relive 1999

The web has certainly changed, and maybe nothing has changed
more than the way we advertise. The days are gone when
establishing a successful website was an easy task.

Paid advertising can be a quick shortcut to launching your
website. Many website owners avoid paid advertising because it
is usually expensive, and seeing a real return on the investment
can be tricky. But if you look around, be creative, and keep an
open mind, there are plenty of bargain advertisements that can
bring quality traffic to your website.
============================================================
Mark Daoust is the owner of Site Reference
(http://www.site-reference.com). If you want to reference this
article, please reference it at its original published location:
(http://www.site-reference.com/articles/General/
Advertising-Like-Its-1999.html)
============================================================

Copyright © 2006 Jayde Online, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

SiteProNews is a registered service mark of Jayde Online, Inc.

It is a great pleaseure to have been accepted on to the committee of the Independent Search Engine & Directory Network. I hope my devotion to search engines will help the organisation gain support and become a larger entity.