By Paul Lang, Editor, Sell It!
April 3rd, 1999

See Also   The Insider Secrets to Marketing Your Business on the Internet   Alternative Payment Solutions   Fraud Prevention Tools   Top Tools to Help You Boost Customer Service   iV-Caller Verification Service   Make Your Price Sell!   FindWhat.com   Make Your Knowledge Sell!   HumanClick   Netship   iFulfill.com   Nexchange   Nothing But 'Net   Netwhistle.com   Bigstep.com   Make Your Site Sell!   AWeber   GoTo.com   Constant Contact   WebAdverts   PersonalStore   SiteInspector   LinkExchange   ClickTrade   Safe   eCHARGE   MilliCent

Product	GoTo.com
Description	Search engine with paid-for rankings
Available	Now
Pricing	Keywords bid on by advertisers

I'm sure that most readers will be aware that the "build it and they will come" attitude to Web site marketing is no longer true, if indeed it ever was. For although the number of Internet users continues to grow rapidly, so does the number of Web sites competing for their attention. And as a result attracting visitors to a Web site is becoming increasingly difficult.

Fortunately, there are many free methods for merchants with a limited budget to market their stores. The effectiveness of techniques such as posting to newsgroups and discussion lists or improving search engine rankings are well understood and employed by most savvy Web merchants.

However, there comes a point in the life cycle of most Web sites where the traffic being delivered through free marketing techniques is simply not enough, or requires too much time and effort to manage. For example, although search engines are free to submit to, the time needed to achieve and maintain high rankings on them can be prohibitive.

One solution to this problem is to invest in paid-for advertising. However, this can prove to be expensive and results can be disappointing. So where should you start?

Up until the middle of last year, I had not spent any money marketing the Sell It! Web site. However, I realised that I was going to have to invest in advertising if I was to achieve my targeted traffic levels. So I spent several months carefully examining the different ways I could spend my money before finally settling on running a trial with GoTo.com. I am very pleased with our results so far, with our average cost of acquiring visitors running at just under $0.05.

So what is GoTo.com and how does it work?

GoTo.com is simply a search engine with an important twist. Whereas with other search engines a complex and unknown algorithm calculates the search rankings, GoTo.com rankings are decided by how much money advertisers are willing to pay for them. Advertisers bid on keyword phrases and the more they bid the higher up the rankings their entry appears. Advertisers do not pay anything for the actual listing - they only pay the amount they bid if someone actually clicks through to their Web site.

Opening a GoTo.com account is done via a simple online form. Advertisers provide some basic information about themselves before selecting the keywords that they wish to bid on, the amount they wish to bid and the URL, title and description of the Web page they want to link to. An initial payment of at least $25 is required when opening an account. This is not a set up fee: the money is credited to the client's account which is then debited each time their link is clicked on. Larger advertisers (i.e. those who wish to spend at least $500 per month) have an account representative assigned to them to help them manage their accounts.

The key factors to success with advertising on GoTo.com are choosing the right keywords and bidding the right price for them. Fortunately GoTo.com provides several tools to help with these decisions.

Choosing the keywords

It is important to select keywords that closely relate to the goods or services you are trying to sell. Some merchants might be tempted to try and attract a large number of visitors by bidding on a popular keyword that is unrelated to the content of their site. However, a member of GoTo.com's editorial staff reviews each bid and inappropriate keyword bids are rejected.

A good starting point for keyword selection is to examine your server logs to find the keywords and phrases that people are already using to find your site via the traditional search engines.

GoTo.com also provides three tools to help you select keywords:

• The Top 100 Search Terms page lists the keywords that are currently getting the most click-throughs.

• The Unbidded Search Terms is a list of popular keywords that have no bids against them

• The Search Term Suggestion List is a powerful tool that gives information on how many clicks a particular keyword phrase has received as well as suggesting some additional, related phrases.

  For example a search on "ski equipment" returns the following information: