Test Before You Invest

Test your search engine advertising plan before investing your entire budget. For less than $100, you can launch campaigns on Pay-For-Placement (PFP) programs including Google ($5), Overture ($50), or FindWhat.com ($25). Your ad listings will be live within days of submitting them, as opposed to paid inclusion programs, which can take weeks or months to achieve improvement in your organic rankings.

Now don't assume that the minimum investment will last very long. If you open an account for $50 and your keywords are $10 per click, you could be lucky to get 20 minutes of search engine fame before your account is depleted. Then again, if your keywords are mere pennies per click and not highly searched by consumers, you could score top positions all month long and barely spend that $50 deposit.

Do you want a general idea of your potential monthly click fees? Run a search for your keywords using Overture's Search Term Suggestion Tool. Write down the number of searches per term . Next, run a search in Overture for the same keywords, and then click on the View Advertisers' Max Bids link in the upper-right corner of the results page (Figure 14.2).

Figure 14.2. To view sponsors' bids on Overture, run a keyword search, click the "View Advertisers' Max Bids" link, and enter the security code displayed.

Once you enter the security code number presented, you'll be able to see what advertisers are willing to pay per click for their positions (Figure 14.3).

Figure 14.3. The sponsors' max bids are revealed by Overture. Here's an example for the phrase "auto insurance."

Choose the position you want knowing you'll need to bid a penny above the current position holder. Unfortunately, the big unknown is your click-through rate. Try 1 ‚ 5% as a reasonable rate for a top-three position on generic keywords (branded keywords are usually higher), or use your average rate from other online media campaigns. Multiply the click rate percentage by the estimated search volume for each of your keywords. Then multiply your estimated clicks by your position bid per keyword. These are very rough estimates, but at least you'll know if your ad expenditures will be closer to $500 or $50,000 per month.

Where should you run a test campaign? PFP is your best choice for achieving top keyword positions within days. Plus, it's easy for any level of marketer to tweak his campaign components to impact his performance. I mention Google, Overture, and FindWhat.com throughout this book because these are today's leaders in PFP. Each has an expansive search distribution network enabling your listings to appear on other sites instantaneously. They also offer helpful management tools to their advertisers.