Glyn
04-12-2001, 11:53/11:53AM
I'm new in this Forum, here is something on Goto I put together:
Goto, or Overture as it's new name now applies, is a pay-per-click search engine which list results based on the amount of money the account holder has assigned to a listing. I’m going to outline how it works, how to get good listings based on research and for which promotional campaigns it’s ideally suited.
First of all, let’s get real and untangle pay-per-click paid for listings with an example.
I have a UK website that I want to list inside Goto; it sells shoes. I have a list of keywords that, when people type into a search engine, I want to show my website.
Here they are:
UK shoes, UK sheos (get miss-spellings they can work wonders), dock shoes, sneakers, buy shoes, shoes online, fashionable shoes.
Before I do anything else I need to go to Goto and type in my keywords and see what people are currently paying to get a listing in the Goto search engine. I type in my keyword and see the results. Next to the listings is a small piece of information that indicates to me how much my competition has spent on their listings.
I've done this because to take advantage of the reach Goto has with it's partner sites it is vital that my website listings appear in position #1, #2 or sometimes #3 on the results page. This is because there are lots of search engines using Goto results but not all of them show more than the top 3 of the results from the Goto database. Therefore you need to look at your keywords and ask yourself, can I afford to be in the top positions. If you can't afford to place your listings in the top positions, it might be better to select other keywords for your promotion in Goto.
Back to me!
So, I've now seen that I can afford the rates to put my listings inside Goto in a good position, so I am going to open my account by going to Goto armed with my credit card.
Form filled, and my account is now open!
Before I add any listings I’ll go to the support section of my new account and find the “Goto Keyword Suggestions” . This service allows Goto advertisers to enter keywords into a box and then see the number of searches conducted for that keyword. This is a useful service as you can enter a word like "shoes" and see all the paired keyword listings for that search. It can be a good yardstick to get an early indication on the levels of click-throughs you might be able to attain. Some people use the Goto keyword suggestions exclusively to do their website promotion, I think it is better to use a combination of the two - Goto suggestions & common sense - as when I drew up the list of keywords for the promotion I did so just as any other web user might have typed the words into a search engine. So my initial list is valid, so long as I can afford it!
With my keywords pairings qualified and affordable I now need to write suitable titles and descriptions for my listings as this will make up the information shown when the results are displayed. To do this I take a look at the current search results for my keywords and get indicators from my competitors’ listings….I then make my descriptions better!
As a rule I make the description: address something, solve something, and do so quickly. Also I’ll make it relevant to the keyword – I won’t use standard titles and descriptions for all my entries - and will use a written that reflects my target market be it old people, young people, business people etc.
For example my keyword "UK shoes" is a fairly generic catch-all and it's not a keyword that really specifies anything in particular about the age bracket or social status of my target market.
Accordingly…
Title: UK Shoes - View and Buy them online
description: Men’s & Women’s shoes delivered in 3 days anywhere in the UK. Sneakers, deck- shoes, plimsolls and top US brands.
…could work quite well as a general listing. It’s from this example that I can see the importance of drilling down my keyword lists to further isolate my market. In that if I chose a keyword of "funky shoes" I could then create a title and description that is written in a way that homes in on youth market (in terms of its written style). That's one of the benefits of Goto, you are not charged for the number of listings, just the listings that are clicked on (n.b. If you do not reach a minimum spend on your Goto account you will be charged about £6.00 for having an inactive account, so make sure some of your listings are generating traffic, by checking the reports in your Goto account manager).
Who needs Goto?
Goto works very well for companies that are selling on the Internet as, in my experience, people that want to buy something on the net tend to go to their computer and log-on with that purpose in mind. Furthermore, the novelty (in some cases) of actively making that purchasing decision online means, that potential customers are more likely to click on the first listing that tallies with what they were looking for (hence the importance of getting inside those top #3 positions in Goto). This differs from the ‘information surfers’ who will drill down page listings looking for a website with a particular slant or feature. Another key consideration, if you are selling on the Internet, is you need to make sure that your site is easy to use. It amazes me but some of the top listings in Goto are for websites that have simply horrible design. However, they are functional. The important factor is the product, and then turning that product into a sale! So you need to make sure that this is taken into account when designing your site. If it's easy for someone to click on your listing and then hard to buy the product the "back" button will be used and you've just paid Goto x-cents for an unconverted customer.
The importance of keeping a site simple can be illustrated by a company called Boo.com who, during the 90s .com period, created a fashion portal that enabled people to buy clothes online. Lots of publicity, a rollout through Europe and a 'touchy-feely' interface with striking colours. However, it didn't work because it was too slow, and ultimately had too many levels of "select this option" before you could actually buy the product. They should have waited for the markets to get broadband, that would have solved their customer’s connection problems, and then it could have been different. Therefore do keep in mind the fact that a person who wants to buy, wants to buy easily. If you need to test your site ask your relatives to buy something on it and see what happens!
Brand names can also use Goto as their budgets might not be based on the actual sales taken online but rather in maintaining a listing high in the search engine to reinforce their online communications strategy of being "a big player". In this respect the mathematics of whether the Goto service is cost-effective forms part of a bigger discussion on the maintenance of the brands visibility in the markets. It's just a question of how big the budget is!
Who does’n need Goto:
Websites not selling a product or service online. This could be community sites, news sites without a revenue stream or any other web portal where there is no real revenue being made. Why? Because paid listings will eventually come to an end and you will never have made any money from the payments you made. It’s that simple!
Conclusion:
Goto is a good search engine because rather than having to wait months for your listings to appear it gives companies selling commercially a platform where they can turn their site into a revenue generator quickly. Whereas at the net’s beginnings companies made money by selling pages positioned well in search engines to other companies. Now, if the budget is there, a company can get listed in a week and have results appearing all over the world. Whether this is a good thing depends on what you are looking for. As just about every search engine has a paid service it’s is difficult to get away from commercially placed listings. Some people sitting in front of their home computers will assume that the site in position #1 is the most popular site when in fact what they really wanted is now on page #2 but they’ll never know because they’ve already clicked on the link. This is a problem because some of the best content on web never sold any products. That’s why e-mail marketing is a popular strategy to promote non-profit making sites with relatively low costs.
Hope this is clear!
Goto, or Overture as it's new name now applies, is a pay-per-click search engine which list results based on the amount of money the account holder has assigned to a listing. I’m going to outline how it works, how to get good listings based on research and for which promotional campaigns it’s ideally suited.
First of all, let’s get real and untangle pay-per-click paid for listings with an example.
I have a UK website that I want to list inside Goto; it sells shoes. I have a list of keywords that, when people type into a search engine, I want to show my website.
Here they are:
UK shoes, UK sheos (get miss-spellings they can work wonders), dock shoes, sneakers, buy shoes, shoes online, fashionable shoes.
Before I do anything else I need to go to Goto and type in my keywords and see what people are currently paying to get a listing in the Goto search engine. I type in my keyword and see the results. Next to the listings is a small piece of information that indicates to me how much my competition has spent on their listings.
I've done this because to take advantage of the reach Goto has with it's partner sites it is vital that my website listings appear in position #1, #2 or sometimes #3 on the results page. This is because there are lots of search engines using Goto results but not all of them show more than the top 3 of the results from the Goto database. Therefore you need to look at your keywords and ask yourself, can I afford to be in the top positions. If you can't afford to place your listings in the top positions, it might be better to select other keywords for your promotion in Goto.
Back to me!
So, I've now seen that I can afford the rates to put my listings inside Goto in a good position, so I am going to open my account by going to Goto armed with my credit card.
Form filled, and my account is now open!
Before I add any listings I’ll go to the support section of my new account and find the “Goto Keyword Suggestions” . This service allows Goto advertisers to enter keywords into a box and then see the number of searches conducted for that keyword. This is a useful service as you can enter a word like "shoes" and see all the paired keyword listings for that search. It can be a good yardstick to get an early indication on the levels of click-throughs you might be able to attain. Some people use the Goto keyword suggestions exclusively to do their website promotion, I think it is better to use a combination of the two - Goto suggestions & common sense - as when I drew up the list of keywords for the promotion I did so just as any other web user might have typed the words into a search engine. So my initial list is valid, so long as I can afford it!
With my keywords pairings qualified and affordable I now need to write suitable titles and descriptions for my listings as this will make up the information shown when the results are displayed. To do this I take a look at the current search results for my keywords and get indicators from my competitors’ listings….I then make my descriptions better!
As a rule I make the description: address something, solve something, and do so quickly. Also I’ll make it relevant to the keyword – I won’t use standard titles and descriptions for all my entries - and will use a written that reflects my target market be it old people, young people, business people etc.
For example my keyword "UK shoes" is a fairly generic catch-all and it's not a keyword that really specifies anything in particular about the age bracket or social status of my target market.
Accordingly…
Title: UK Shoes - View and Buy them online
description: Men’s & Women’s shoes delivered in 3 days anywhere in the UK. Sneakers, deck- shoes, plimsolls and top US brands.
…could work quite well as a general listing. It’s from this example that I can see the importance of drilling down my keyword lists to further isolate my market. In that if I chose a keyword of "funky shoes" I could then create a title and description that is written in a way that homes in on youth market (in terms of its written style). That's one of the benefits of Goto, you are not charged for the number of listings, just the listings that are clicked on (n.b. If you do not reach a minimum spend on your Goto account you will be charged about £6.00 for having an inactive account, so make sure some of your listings are generating traffic, by checking the reports in your Goto account manager).
Who needs Goto?
Goto works very well for companies that are selling on the Internet as, in my experience, people that want to buy something on the net tend to go to their computer and log-on with that purpose in mind. Furthermore, the novelty (in some cases) of actively making that purchasing decision online means, that potential customers are more likely to click on the first listing that tallies with what they were looking for (hence the importance of getting inside those top #3 positions in Goto). This differs from the ‘information surfers’ who will drill down page listings looking for a website with a particular slant or feature. Another key consideration, if you are selling on the Internet, is you need to make sure that your site is easy to use. It amazes me but some of the top listings in Goto are for websites that have simply horrible design. However, they are functional. The important factor is the product, and then turning that product into a sale! So you need to make sure that this is taken into account when designing your site. If it's easy for someone to click on your listing and then hard to buy the product the "back" button will be used and you've just paid Goto x-cents for an unconverted customer.
The importance of keeping a site simple can be illustrated by a company called Boo.com who, during the 90s .com period, created a fashion portal that enabled people to buy clothes online. Lots of publicity, a rollout through Europe and a 'touchy-feely' interface with striking colours. However, it didn't work because it was too slow, and ultimately had too many levels of "select this option" before you could actually buy the product. They should have waited for the markets to get broadband, that would have solved their customer’s connection problems, and then it could have been different. Therefore do keep in mind the fact that a person who wants to buy, wants to buy easily. If you need to test your site ask your relatives to buy something on it and see what happens!
Brand names can also use Goto as their budgets might not be based on the actual sales taken online but rather in maintaining a listing high in the search engine to reinforce their online communications strategy of being "a big player". In this respect the mathematics of whether the Goto service is cost-effective forms part of a bigger discussion on the maintenance of the brands visibility in the markets. It's just a question of how big the budget is!
Who does’n need Goto:
Websites not selling a product or service online. This could be community sites, news sites without a revenue stream or any other web portal where there is no real revenue being made. Why? Because paid listings will eventually come to an end and you will never have made any money from the payments you made. It’s that simple!
Conclusion:
Goto is a good search engine because rather than having to wait months for your listings to appear it gives companies selling commercially a platform where they can turn their site into a revenue generator quickly. Whereas at the net’s beginnings companies made money by selling pages positioned well in search engines to other companies. Now, if the budget is there, a company can get listed in a week and have results appearing all over the world. Whether this is a good thing depends on what you are looking for. As just about every search engine has a paid service it’s is difficult to get away from commercially placed listings. Some people sitting in front of their home computers will assume that the site in position #1 is the most popular site when in fact what they really wanted is now on page #2 but they’ll never know because they’ve already clicked on the link. This is a problem because some of the best content on web never sold any products. That’s why e-mail marketing is a popular strategy to promote non-profit making sites with relatively low costs.
Hope this is clear!