Free Vs Paid International Engine Exposure
by Dyanna S. Culp
Global Webmaster pockets are being milked dry by paid inclusion and ppc programs.
Everyone wants our money, both the big international and the small local engines. $600 for engine inclusion here, $15 there, could add up to multi-thousands of dollars. Adult websites are hit especially hard with submission fees, typically double that of a non-adult site and some engines will not accept any adult site submissions. Just a few short glorious years ago, if you had to pay at all it was a one time fee, now it's annually. Read the small print in the submission forms. Paid inclusion does not "guarantee" a site's inclusion or any priority ranking - it just guarantees you might get spidered.
Almost everything written about engine relationships, submissions, optimization and marketing has changed.
Not just once, but multiple times over the past year. Following advice from Google or Yahoo articles that were up to date in December 2003, would now cause you nothing but grief. Engine relationships and spider techniques are in a constant state of flux. Remember that what is true today, may not be tomorrow. Keeping up with it all is a very daunting task for a busy webmaster, and is keeping all of us Internet marketing consultants busier than ever.
The Web is truly achieving a degree of global homogeneity, at least in the search engine markets.
There are no longer any major differences between U.S. and European Internet Marketing. Thousands of small local engines still exist worldwide, but no matter which country you choose to study; Google, Yahoo and MSN are the three top international players with the majority of the search market. With all eyes on the burgeoning Asian market, local Chinese and Japanese engines are battling Google and Yahoo takeovers.
Anywhere the Web is taking off, and money stands to be made, engines and portals are demanding money.
This is a problem worldwide, especially in Europe, the U.S. and Asia. You can spend thousands on paid inclusion and still see no traffic rolling in. You can pay for inclusion in MSN, but may rank # 572. Yahoo has dropped its flat fee inclusion program; now you pay for inclusion and pay-per-click...and Google does not have a paid inclusion program at all.
Running PPC ads for high demand search terms can run into hundreds, even thousands, of dollars per month.
Many frustrated webmasters see PPC ads as their only option for online visibility. PPC ads are available from all three big SE players, and have distribution networks across the majority of local country engines. And yes, they will bring in traffic, but at a considerable cost.
Worldwide PPC advertising
- Google: you can have .com AdWords distributed to your countries of choice worldwide. But a more successful strategy is to set up accounts with ads written specifically for the target country, and if possible with a corresponding domain ending. Low traffic click-through rates will result in Google dropping you from bidding on that term. Place the word in brackets, for example [slave] and you'll get back in by only showing up for the specific term in brackets - not any word combination. Save money by using negative terms to get rid of non-relevant traffic. For instance you're paying for the term: massage. Adding the terms horse and animal with a minus sign (-) in front of each will stop your ad from appearing for horse or animal massage.
- Overture: The top PPC provider, with markets in the US, UK, Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, and the list keeps growing. A separate account is required for each target country. I've found almost identical traffic from expensive #1 spots and cheaper #7 spots. Sometimes those top spots get excessive hits from jealous competition, who figures you can afford the costs - since you're bidding to be #1.
- Espotting: a European version of Overture of particular importance in the UK and Germany.
There is still a free road into high rank positions on every engine worldwide. If you can get high in the big three global engines: Google, Yahoo and MSN, and the top directory: DMOZ (also known as the Open Directory Project) - then you'll have a free ride on almost every engine in the world.
The majority of online Europeans use Google and MSN. Google, MSN, Yahoo and other American based engines have a huge presence internationally. If you're in Google US, then you're in Google UK, but may be outranked by a local domain ending such as .de for Germany or .co.uk for Great Britain. Google offers users in other countries the options of searching their database globally, by country or by language. They provide search services (or data feeds) to over 130 search engines, portals and corporate websites in more than thirty countries. Without a country specific domain you won't appear in a country database selection even if you're in the Google global base. Bill Gates has announced his goal of MSN toppling Google from their throne, and Yahoo has rapidly been eating up Google market shares in the U.S. and Asia.
PART TWO: Engines, Directories, Portals?
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