Competition Levels in Search Engine Promotion

Everyone knows that having top 10 positions on the major search engines can bring all the traffic and visitors you can handle, and then some. But how do we get those top 10 listings and what should we expect to pay to get them?

Do a quick search on Google or one of the other leading engines, using a search phrase that people might use when looking for your products or services, and see what comes back. This will provide a simple way to approach this question by looking at your competition.

Here are some basic "rules of thumb" you should use to categorize your market -

• 100-5000 - ''low competition''  
• 5001-25000 - ''medium competition''  
• 25001-250,000 - ''high competition'' 

Once you have determined the level of competition for top positions in your business category, use the following as a basic guide:

• Low competition with no previous ''search engine optimization'' - Expect to pay around $25 to $65 per month. Locate a good submission service who will give your home page a ''tune-up'' then submit your site ''manually'' to all the leading engines and directories. 
• Medium to High competition on restricted budget - Not all search engines pay much attention to what is in your Meta tags, so look for someone who will make changes to the HTML on your key content pages to give them a boost. Try to locate a service that will go beyond basic Meta Tag revisions. 
• Sites with high or extremely high competition - You will encounter various approaches at higher service levels. Pricing varies greatly at these levels, and almost always include a setup fee then ongoing monthly service fees. Think about Doorway/Hallway pages as pages that focus on a specific search phrase, each targeting a specific search engine. It is common to have sites with over 100 custom designed Doorway pages targeting multiple search phrases and multiple search engines. 

Remember, most people have limited knowledge when it comes to search engine ranking and the various types of services on offer. So, developing a better understanding of how it all works will help you decide the best approach for your web site, and will help you make an informed decision based on realistic expectations.

Web Directories

Don't forget to submit your link to web directories. Directories are categorized listings of websites. They are usually free to submit your link to, but they are often human-edited which means it will take some time (it can be on the order of months) before your listing appears and your link needs to be top-notch for them to think it's worthy of inclusion in their directory. Keyword spamming and other black hat SEO tricks will definitely not work in these situations.

One good thing about directories is that your listing appears alongside lots of other relevant non-spam listings. It also guarantees your site will be indexed by the major internet search engines because they always index web directories. The quality of links in directories is always high due to the human-editing factor. It's very difficult to get bad sites into those directories, so make sure your design is clean and that there are no broken links or page errors before submitting. You may only get one chance for someone to consider your site for inclusion in their directory.

Here are some of the major web directories that are a great place to start promoting your website:

DMOZ
Google Directory
Yahoo Directory

PermAds - Permanent Advertising

Well, I just ran across a unique and cheap (potentially free) way to promote your website and I just had to share it with you all. Consider this a mini-review of the service.

It's called PermAds and their little tagline/catch phrase sums up their concept pretty well: "Because advertising doesn't have to be a monthly expense". That automatically perks up the ears of anyone like me who is poor and destitute.

From the PermAds FAQs page:

PermAds are a new way of thinking about web advertising. We asked ourselves "Is web advertising something that every website has to budget for every month?" and we decided the answer was "No". PermAds were born out of this question and a desire to see a revolution take place in the web advertising industry.

For the technical, rather than philosophical, answer, PermAds are permanent advertisements. Advertisers pay for a PermAd and they never have to put any more money in that ad if they don't want to. Advertisers don't pay per-click, per-impression, per-action, or per-anything. The PermAd will permanently be displayed as a search result for an advertiser-selected keyword or keyphrase.

OK, so digging through the marketing and legalese, PermAds is basically offering permanent web advertising to advertisers. I've honestly never heard of anyone offering something like this before. You don't often find permanent anything on the web, so that in itself makes PermAds a rare find. But the real question is - is it worth it?

Well, they are currently running a promotion where they offer 5 PermAds Points (their site-specific form of currency) free to all new accounts. They display their ads ordered by PermAds Points value. So, you could take their free points and make five small 1-point ads or one big 5-point ad. Either way, you don't have much to lose when advertising is free.

Now, of course, they have to make money somehow too, right? They make money by offering people the ability to purchase additional PermAds Points for $1.00 each. So, if you find somebody else has put up a 5-point ad for "video games" then you're going to have to shell out at least $1.00 to be able to put up a 6-point ad (5 free points plus 1 additional purchased point). One welcome addition here is that they don't require any minimum purchase of PermAds Points. I can just buy 1 point for $1 if I wanted. On a related side note, their payments are processed through PayPal, which, honestly, I often feel safer paying through PayPal than giving my credit card number directly to a business anyway.

The site apparently just launched because the 5 free PermAds Points are part of an introductory deal to get people to sign up. The upshot of this is that there aren't a ton of ads on the site right now. So, you can probably get your link listed as the first search result for your chosen search phrase pretty easily and probably using only the 5 free points. If this idea really takes off and advertisers flock to PermAds then you may have to throw a little extra money at your ads to maintain your search positioning in the future. Of course, if PermAds doesn't take off then you end up with a permanent top-ranked search result for your troubles.

The PermAds ad management interface is simple and bland, but functional. It doesn't have some of the niceties of other web 2.0 sites, but it still works well for what it does. You can input a particular search phrase and if you untick the "Limit to My PermAds" checkbox it will list everyone's ads that are competing for your search phrase. Not only that, it shows what each ad's value is in PermAds Points. It is rare that an advertising system will let you directly see what ads are competing with yours, so be sure to use this information to your advantage. What this means is that you can easily find out exactly how much value you need to add to your PermAd to get it to display in the position you want. Also, be sure to read about their Linked PermAds feature on their FAQs page. Linked PermAds are essential to easily displaying a single ad as a result for multiple search phrases.

Another nice feature PermAds offers is referrals. Basically, if you get someone to sign up for the service using your special referral link or mentioning your username during the sign up process, they are tagged as one of your referrals. What that means is that whenever one of your referrals purchases PermAds Points you get some points for free (half of however many they buy, to be exact). Referrals also work on multiple levels so if a referral of one of your referrals buys points, you will get one quarter (i.e. - half of half) of however many they bought. You'll get 1/8 of the points purchased 3 referrals down, and so on. So, basically, if you refer lots of people to the service it will be easier and cheaper for you to keep your own ads on the top of the search results because you'll earn plenty of free points.

Now if there's any catch to how easy and cheap PermAds is it's the prominence of where your ad is displayed. Currently, your ad is displayed exclusively on their partner site NovusSearch. So, the visibility of your ad depends on how much usage and traffic NovusSearch gets. This is going to be one of those chicken and egg things. Right now there's not a lot of search traffic to NovusSearch. But the upside of that is there aren't a lot of advertisers competing for your search phrases. But if this idea ever suddenly gets a lot of attention and traffic the advertisers will come running. Likewise if the advertisers start placing lots of ads, more people will come there to search. And believe me, a site like this can explode in popularity given the right circumstances. I've seen it happen before. Look up the Million Dollar Homepage if you don't believe me.

So, what's my overall recommendation? In spite of the low traffic NovusSearch gets currently, it's hard not to recommend signing up for a PermAds account as an alternative to traditional CPC and CPM advertising methods such as Google AdWords or ValueClick. Since an account and 5 PermAds Points are currently free it's almost definitely worth your investment of just a few minutes of your time. Plus, getting in early can make it easier to maintain your ad placement if the site's popularity explodes one day.

PermAds Official Site

Search engine optimization (SEO)

One of the most common ways for visitors to find their way to your website is through a search engine such as Google, Yahoo, bing, etc. If you've done any research on how to get your website to appear in those search results you may have heard about search engine optimization (SEO).

For those of you that are new to this, let's take a look at Wikipedia's definition of SEO:

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the visibil
ity of a web site or a web page in search engines via the "natural" or un-paid ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results. Other forms of search engine marketing (SEM) target paid listings. In general, the earlier (or higher on the page), and more frequently a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine. SEO may target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, video search and industry-specific vertical search engines. This gives a web site web presence.

As an Internet marketing strategy, SEO considers how search engines work and what people search for. Optimizing a website may involve editing its content and HTML and associated coding to both increase its relevance to specific keywords and to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines. Promoting a site to increase the number of backlinks, or inbound links, is another SEO tactic.

SEO is one of the most important things you can do to promote your website for free. Obviously, your cost is time, but usually time is what we, the poor and destitute, have the most of. :)

Here are a few links to some SEO techniques you can use to promote your website:

SEO 101 - Basic Optimization Techniques

SEO Tips & Techniques | SEOCopter
Free SEO Techniques Info Help Strategies Tricks Secrets Advice - HOME
30 Black Hat SEO Techniques You Can Use Ethically | SEOptimise

Welcome to Web Promotion for the Poor and Destitute

Web Promotion for the Poor and Destitute is a blog focused on sharing tips and tricks on how to promote, advertise, and market anything on the web for free or for a very small investment. 

If you are a webmaster on a budget, this blog is for you.

If you are a small business owner that can't afford lots of advertising, this blog is for you.

If you are a college student with no income trying to promote your million dollar idea of a website, this blog is for you.

Everybody has dreams at one time or another of making money for themselves and getting rich off their own personal business... but as the old adage goes, it takes money to make money. The traditional way to promote your product, business, or website on the internet is to pour hundreds if not thousands of dollars into numerous marketing and advertising options. You would start by purchasing cost-per-click (CPC) text ads with Google AdWords, Yahoo Search Marketing, and Microsoft adCenter. You might try running some cost-per-impression (CPM) image banner ads through Tribal Fusion or ValueClick. Maybe then you try running some ads on Facebook so that you know your target demographic is highly targeted by your ads. By the end of all this you will have good traffic to your website, but you will have also spent a lot of money. The purpose of this blog is to show you alternative ways to promote your product, business, or website on the internet - for free or at minimal cost to you.

We will update this blog as we find new information for how to make this seemingly impossible goal more attainable.

Good luck!