Mowing the Digital Landscape

We all want our Web sites to be placed at the top of Google and Yahoo’s search results. The results of a 2006 study conducted by researchers at Cornell University revealed that over 50% of Google users fixated on the first two links presented within their search results. After spending a significant amount of time and money on building a site, you yearn to be one of those links that consumers are fixating on.

The question is how do you get to the top of the list? Invest in organic search engine optimization? Maybe. Enthusiasts of this method claim that if it is performed correctly, a company can:
-Improve their Competitive Edge
-Expand Customer Base and target Audience
-Boost sales / Increase their return on investment
-Save time and money

The major downfall is time. It can be a very tedious process to properly optimize your Web site so that it has priority placement on a search engine. So what’s the alternative if you are in a hurry to get your site in front of the online consumer base? Paid placement.

Paying for your site to be featured at the top of a list, in the “sponsored links” or similar section, is the quickest way to moveon up. While the ethics of this practice can be debated, and may have, what can’t be questioned is how profitable this practice is for the search engines. Paid search is expected to become a $33 billion industry by 2010. This means that many of your competitors, if they are not already, are paying Google and Yahoo to be placed above your link.

My suggestion is that if you decide to take advantage of the instantaneous upward movement of paid search that you ensure that your link is clearly marked as a paid link. The last thing you want is negative push back from consumer watch dog groups negating the positive effects of being front and center on page 1 of a Google search.

Want specific advice on how to go about implementing paid search? Sit back, relax, and enjoy these words of wisdom from m0serious.