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How To Maximize Your Traffic With Goto.com
By Michael Wong
Goto.com is one of the fastest growing new bread of search engines.
GoTo.com’s made it's debut in June 1998, and by October had
become the 24th most visited site on the Web, according to
RelevantKnowledge. Serving some 4.2 million unique visitors, up
from 2.6 million the previous month, the growth represents the highest
percentage leap of any search engine in the same time period. This
increase comes at the same time the top three most visited search
guides experienced a drop in unique visitors.
With the traditional search engines, you submit your website then
wait anywhere from a couple of weeks to a few months to see if
your site is listed. And even then you may not be listed, which seems
to be the case with Yahoo.
Goto.com works with a different system. You bid for search term
positions and every time someone clicks through to your site via the
link on their search engine, you are charged the amount you bid.
Bidding starts at only 1 cent per search term. The more you bid, the
higher you are likely to be ranked. For example, if the #1 position for
a particular search term costs the bidder 50 cents, you can take the
#1 spot with a higher bid of 51 cents. You can bid for as many search
terms as you wish, so as long as they are relevant to the contents of
your website. I discovered this when I submitted bids for search terms
related to the "Y2K problem". They insisted on proof of content
related to the Y2K problem, before they would accept my search
terms. This policy shows their desire to ensure their search results
are relevant to the search. What is also good about Goto.com is that
you can usually expect your listings to be added to their database
within days of your submission.
A number of features that are particularly useful for webmasters are
their, "Top 100 Popular Search Terms List" and "Suggested Search
Terms" tool.
The "Suggested Search Terms" really comes into its own, when you
are trying to think of keywords to add to your "keyword" meta tags.
Before I discovered this useful tool, I would guess the keywords that
I thought were relevant in the keyword meta tag, but now I know
exactly what keywords people are using to search with. I simply enter
some keywords into the "Suggested Search Terms" form and it returns
a list of similar search terms, which their visitors have searched with,
along with the number of times that it has been entered. Now you
don't have to guess!
Another useful list you should take a look at is their "Top Unbidded
Search Terms on GoTo". This is a list of their most popular search
terms which nobody have made a bid for. So, if you make a bid of
just 1 cent, you are already guaranteed the #1 position. Their most
popular unbidded search term had over 5000 requests in a month.
I had previously advised my newsletter readers to use Goto.com as
part of their marketing strategy. But I have had a number of people
tell me that Goto.com haven't sent much traffic their way.
So now I will show you how to attract more visitors with Goto.com.
Marketing your site in Goto.com is the same any other form of
marketing. Any professional marketer would tell you that the most
important factor with any form of marketing is that it is a numbers
game. The second would be that you can not predict exactly how
a prospect would react to your offer, so you must test different ads.
If you applied these two principles with your listings in Goto.com, I
guarantee that you would attract a lot more visitors.
If you was selling a wonder solution to combat the Y2K problem,
you would obviously want your listing returned when people enter
a search for "Y2K problem", "millennium bug", "year 2000
problem", etc. How many different search terms can you come up
with?
How about at least 70-80? Yes, there are at least that many and
probably a lot more if you think hard enough. Did you think of
"millenium fix", "millenium info", "y2000 software",
"yr2000
compliance", or even just "2000". Notice the misspellings of the
word "millennium" in the first two examples. It is quite common
for people to misspell words when they type. If you didn't bid for
"millenium" (missing "n") and all the various keywords associated
with it, you would have missed a lot of prospects. So you must
bid for as many variations of a search term as you can think of,
as well as for misspelt ones. The more search terms you are listed
under, the more likely your site will be displayed in the results.
And by adding different misspellings of the search terms, you are
taking into account the different search terms people enter.
No matter what you sell, if you offer it to enough people, one
person will make a purchase. The reason why I added that
comment is that instead of bidding $1.00 for one #1 position under
one search term, you would probably get a better result with 100
different listings at 1 cent each. So, instead of having one ad which
would cost you $1.00 to attract one visitor, you could have 100
different ads for 1 cent each, which could result in a possible 100
visitors.
So maybe not all of them will be listed at #1, or even in the top
10, but I am pretty sure that more than a few of them would be.
Your chances of attracting a click-through is 99 times better than
if you only have the single listing. After all, you can ask 100 people
to search for something and 100 different search terms could be
used, which can return as many as 100 different sets of results.
I don't think many people have realized how to market effectively
with Goto.com yet. If you search for "millennium bug" in Goto.com,
you will see that the #1 position costs the advertiser 11 cents per
click-through. Yet if you search for "millenium bug" (misspelling
with a missing "n", the #1 position costs less than half that, at 4
cents per click-through and the site listed at #1 under "millennium
bug" is no where to be seen. The strange thing is that I have a
listing under both of these search terms for 1 cent each and
"millenium bug" (misspelt) sent me twice the number of
visitors as "millennium bug" did.
Note that there is no need to bid for the plurals of the search
terms. With traditional search engines, they do not return results
if someone searched for "books" and your keyword was "book".
With Goto.com they have a feature called, "Search Pluralization,"
which allows your line listing to appear in search results in the
singular and plural versions of the word.
So to quickly recap. First look through the "Top 100 Popular
Search Terms List" for suitable search terms that you should
bid on. Next look through Goto.com's "Top 100 Popular Search
Terms List". After that visit their "Suggested Search Terms" form.
Now enter every variation of the keywords you already have on
your list. Add the top search results to your list. You don't have
to add every one of the results. There is no point in adding a
search terms that has only been searched on once in a whole
month. But don't set the limit too high either. Results with 10 or
20 searches may not sound like much, but multiply that by one
or two hundred different search terms and it all adds up. Don't
forget to also search for misspelt keywords. You will probably
be ranked higher with these.
Try to produce a list of at least 2-300 search terms. The more
the better really. You don't have to produce this list all in one
go. You can set yourself a target of adding 100 new search
terms every month. Then use their Excel template to submit
your search terms. Test different descriptions even if the search
terms are similar. How much you bid is entirely up to you. You
can start with the lowest bid of 1 cent for all your search terms.
After a month, double your bids to 2 cents to see if that improves
your results.
Another important is that if more than one person bid the same
amount for the search term, they will return the listings in the
order they received the bids. So it is a first-come, first-served
basis. I think this is a very fair system, which is an added
incentive for you to submit your bids as soon as possible.
If you need proof Goto.com is effective, I give you this fact.
Every month they send me a report showing me exactly which
search terms that I am listed under, the number of people who
have clicked through and how much it has cost me. In January
1999, Goto.com sent me 8,294 visitors at a cost of $82.94.
For $82.94 most major websites wouldn't sell you 8,294 banner
impressions, let alone guarantee you that many click-throughs. If
you can show me anywhere else I can get 8,294 visitors for
$82.94, I will eat my hat! One last tip, the most effective
keyword that I have found is "free", which probably comes
as no surprise. Add it to the beginning of as many
search terms as you can. I have found that the difference in
terms of traffic for the same search term, but with "free" in
front of it, can be as much as 500%!
You will find that they respond pretty quickly to your requests.
On average, I find that they add my search terms within a day
or two of submission. Goto.com does work, so Go To It!
Here are the addresses you should visit:
"Goto.com Homepage"
<http://www.goto.com>
"Top Unbidded Search Terms on GoTo"
<http://www.goto.com/d/about/advertisers/unbidded.jhtml>
"Top 100 Popular Search Terms List"
<http://goto.com/d/top100/index.jhtml>
"Suggested Search Terms"
<http://inventory.go2.com/inventory/searchInventory.mp>.
================
About The Author
================
Michael Wong is the Editor and Webmaster at eBoz!. His
award winning website offers best of the e-commerce, web
design and low-cost internet marketing resources found on the web.
Visit his site <http://www.eboz.com/index.shtml>
and subscribe to
his free monthly newsletter for expert advice and hot tips on better
web design, website promotion, search engine rankings and free
and low-cost internet advertising. To subscribe, send a blank email
to <listmanager@postmastergeneral.com>,
with "subscribe eboz"
in the subject field.
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