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Issue # 207 (11-17-2003)
Pay To Play Is Here To StayMarketing your Web site using the search engines has moved, rather quickly, from "Hit or Miss" Optimization into a much more market driven set of options. Does the ability to paying the engines to get what you want level the playing field, or further divide the big guns from the mom and pops ? |
| Johnny's Ramblings |
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Like it or not, pay to play is here, and it's not going away any time soon. The revolution started with GoTo.com's introduction of the "Pay Per Click" (PPC) search engine. The idea was that anyone, small or large, could determine their ranking on their desired keywords, based simply on how much money they were willing to pay for that spot. "Mom-and-pop" shops could compete on equal footing with the IBMs of the world and actually get the traffic from the coveted top spots in the search engines. Over time, bid prices have gotten to the point (at many of the larger PPCs) where the smaller Webmasters have been priced out. In the organic search world, skilled optimizers could manipulate your wording and layout to tickle the spiders and get your Web site listed high for "regular" spidering-style search engines (Google, AltaVista, etc). But as the rules get fuzzier and the competition gets more fierce, top positions are harder than ever to achieve, and there's no guarantee that spiders will ever find you anyway. Enter: Paid for inclusion (PFI) and trusted feeds. Now you can pay the spiders to find you, and while they're at it, tell them what to find, how to index it, and how to show it. Smaller shops are back on level footing in these engines, at least for the time being. I wonder aloud what's next? Will they find some way to price trusted feeds to the point where only companies with 6-digit marketing budgets can afford them? What's next on the horizon?
I don't have the answer to that question (yet), but I can tell you, with certainty, that if you aren't willing to pay, you're getting exactly what you pay for... and that just might mean that you're completely on your own again, in the dark. The capitalist in me is cheering loudly. Markets are emerging to fill a need. The "haves" can pay to have more, and the "have-nots" can get into the game as well, taking advantage of PPC, PFI and trusted feeds to compete on a more level playing surface. Everyone has the potential to win. We, as Webmasters big and small, have a viable set of paid marketing options, the search engines are able to stay in business without relying on nonsense banners, and the searchers, God love them, are getting better results all the time. In my opinion, PPC and the newer trusted feeds/PFI options are allowing Webmasters and Web site owners to better target their audiences. And regardless of what you've been led to believe, audiences WANT to be targeted. |
Read the Johnny's Ramblings section from the Last Issue or in the Following Issue
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