By Tom Falco

The best way to market your websites these days is with pay-per-click search engines and the best of course is Overture, previously GoTo.com. Google is very good, too.

It seems that the major search engines are changing their rules daily and it is getting harder and harder to get your site listed. In many cases one must pay and that does not guarantee being placed at the top of any one category. But with Overture.com and other pay-per-click search engines, you can place yourself at the top and you regulate how much you want to spend per click. With a little experimentation, you can find out the best click through rates and the best terms to use. We sell custom printed promotional and party items. We noticed that when we placed our printed cups, matches, napkins, etc. under the category of “Retirement Parties,” we received lots of clicks, but no orders for retirement parties. When we placed the same items under “Proms,” “Family Reunions,” “High School Reunions,” and such, the orders were coming in like wildfire. So of course we removed our listing under “Retirement Parties” since it seemed that people were willing to click on our link out of curiosity, costing us money each time they clicked, yet they never placed orders.

With pay-per-click we were able to get many pages and items listed that on the regular search engines would not have been. On most search engines, we are at the top with Post-It Notes, Pens, and other items, but for the Reunion items or Party supplies we would never be raised to the top since that is not our major business. But through the pay-per-click engines, we are at the top in those categories and it has paid off very nicely. The best part of Overture.com is that they have major deals with Yahoo, MSN, and other major search engines, and the top three listings on Overture are actually carried over to the other search engines. So what you have on Overture is also on Yahoo, MSN, Ask Jeeves, Alta Vista and others at the same time. This is only for the three listings on each category. Google is partners with AOL among others.

This has helped with our 2002 Calendar promotion. We were able to place the printed calendars at the top of the search engines, which enabled us to sell out our entire stock! When they were sold out, we simply removed the listings. Listings start at only .05 per click, which isn’t bad. Depending on your listing and your business type, .05 could get you to the top in many categories. You can check your stats daily and see where the clicks are coming from and how many people are actually clicking on specific key words or links.