How Do I Get The Best Web Promotion? – Optimized Listings The focus will be on search engine listings and their optimization. Covering the following topics: 1. Analyzing Results 2. Designing Listing 3.... [Read more]

Global Promote also offer a paid inclusion service which can be found: www.globalpromote.com, but if you want to submit more than one URL, it would probably be cheaper for you to use someone like PrioritySubmit.com.

PrioritySubmit.com is a fairly good service and because they are an “official” reseller for all the major engines

	Priority Submissions
	48 Hour Guaranteed Inclusion to all major search engines!

(that is important), they do not charge a service fee. This means that you do not end up paying any more than if you submitted thorough the engines directly.

If you prefer to use a different service, watch out for multiple URLs discounts. Many submission services will always charge you the FULL price per URL and will not pass on multiple URL discounts. Remember that many engines charge a lower rate for submitting more than 1 URL and the second URL price can be 20-50% cheaper.

Engines
Which engines should you target?
Yahoo! Search is very important. It is important because it provide search results to many other portal sites such as AltaVista, AllTheWeb, MSN, etc.. To a lesser degree TEOMA and Ask Jeeves. Ask Jeeves is however a very important traffic source for UK users.

Google is the largest and probably the most important, but unfortunately google does not currently offer a priority listing or indexing service. There are still a few tricks you can use with google, but I will cover these in a future issue.

5. Trusted Feeds

I have touched upon trusted feeds in the past, but when it comes to optimizing your listings there is simply no better way to do this.

The bad news for most people is that to be able to participate in most of the trusted feed programs, you usually need at least 200 pages or more.

Basically a trusted feed enables you to submit a large number of URLs with no up-front cost. Instead of an annual per URL fee, you will be charged per click. What is of greater interest from an optimization perspective, is the fact that a trusted feed enables you to specify exactly what title and extract is to appear in the results. This means that you no longer have to optimize the page itself. Instead you optimize the data feed that you submit to the engine. This gives you a great deal of freedom and flexibility. You can also change your listing without having to change your web site, and that is a great advantage.

The only down side is the fee, which is on average in the $0.15 to $0.25 per click range. This means that optimization become critical.

6. Optimizing Trusted Feeds

Optimizing trusted feeds is quite different to optimizing organic listings. With organic listings it is to your advantage to get as much traffic from each engine as you can. Because organic listings do not cost you anything, every click has a branding value even if it does not convert to a sale. With Trusted feeds you are paying per click, so you only want to pay for qualified leads.

If we re-visit our Hotel in London example, if you are paying $0.25 per click, you want to target very specific keywords and you also want to be much more specific in the information you include in your listing.

First of all, choose your keywords carefully and as always keep a close eye on your ROI (return on investment) for each term. Stay away from general key terms like “Hotel”. This will give you a lot of clicks, but with a poor conversion rate. “Hotel in London” will result in smaller number of clicks, but with a much better ROI.

Also be very specific on what you have to offer. If your room rates start at $400 per night, you should mention that in your listings. If you do not, you will get backpackers looking for a $25 hostel clicking on your link. Such visitors will not convert to paying customers and will only cost you money.

The rule is: The more specific you are in your description of the services you offer, the higher the conversion rate and the lower the advertising cost will be.

7. Submitting a Trusted Feeds

If you have a large number of ULRs and a large promotional budget, you may be able to deal with the engines directly. If you are able to do this, you will be in a good position to negotiate better rates, however you need to be prepared to spend at least $50000 per month. If this does not fit your profile, you will need to go through one of the trusted feed resellers.

Good resellers are: PrioritySubmit.com, Marketleap, Position Tech and Trellian. Each service has its strong points, PrioritySubmit.com for example supports the largest number of engines, includes support for Google Adwords (which I like) as well as data feeds into PPC engines like Overture and Kanoodle etc.

TIP
When dealing with Trusted Feed management companies BEWARE of over optimization. SEO companies get paid on commission, so it is in their interest to generate as many clicks as possible. As a result, you may get a lot of traffic that will NOT convert to sales. Your aim is to maximize your ROI (Return of Investment) and that means spending as little money as possible for the highest return.

This obviously creates a conflict of interest. One solution is to work very closely with your SEO and keep a close eye on what keywords your SEO is targeting and what your ROI is. A second options is to create your own feeds in-house. This will give you the maximum control over the feed and over the choice of keywords.

GlobalPromote.com has a program which is used to generate Trusted feeds, so if you are is interested in doing these in-house, click on the link.

GlobalPromote.com also specialize in Trusted feed management and optimization. If you are interested in any trusted feed services, please visit their site for more information and a quote. GlobalPromote.com guarantees a high quality, honest service… and that counts for a lot in my book.