“It's easy to make a buck. It's a lot tougher to make a difference.” ~ Tom Brokaw ~

Pay to play

If you can’t afford the time to build a solid linking program, you may wish to consider paying to be linked on the first results pages of search engines. Whilst reciprocal linking generally only requires an investment of your time, many search engines now offer submission listing and advertising sponsorship services for a fee. These paid inclusion programs can have you listed faster, so your links will appear in results pages as soon as possible. Pay-per-click services advertise your link in search results as a means of driving targeted traffic to your site.

Paid Submission
It can often take several weeks or months for the search engines to find and crawl your site, so they can add it to their index or directory. The majority of leading search engines now offer a paid submission service to index your site more rapidly. For a fee, the search engines will include your website in their index within a stated period of time.

We have mostly found that unless you are in a desperate hurry, it is unlikely you will get much return on the cost of these programs. Some programs also state that your non-refundable payment does not automatically guarantee inclusion, only that it will be considered for inclusion.

Pay-per-click
One of the best methods of having your link on the top ranking pages for searches is participating in a pay-for-performance program. These programs allow you to bid on keywords and key-phrases that users type in, with the highest bid achieving the highest ranking on the search results page. The link is displayed in the form of a text-based ad and you only pay the amount bid when someone clicks on your ad’s link. This allows you to control your marketing spend by setting a daily budget for what you are willing to outlay.

Generally, the most popular and competitive keywords are the most expensive. So explore bid prices for less obvious terms that still match your site content but can provide click-through at a cheaper rate. Choose your keywords carefully to pick a battle you can win.

Pay-per-click programs normally provide online tools and statistical reporting to help you measure response rate. Test different keywords and evaluate your click-through rates compared to their cost. Your test results will show which are your most productive keywords. Use this information to re-consider the keywords and key-phrases you are targeting with your on-site Search Engine Optimisation.

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