MSN and Keywords Plus

[dvduval]

Has anyone found the purchasing of keywords through Realnames worthwhile. I noticed that some of the competitors that are ahead of me on MSN have them.
The problem is they want $299 for a review and $199 for the anual fee. If they are charging so much, is there some great reward that I'm missing? Does it boost your rank on all keywords or just the one you purchase?

I've paid for Looksmart and Inktomi. I have played with the Title and body text. I have more reciprocal links than all of my competitors. I'm not sure what else I can do.

And --what is the link for AOL keywords?

[dvduval]

I just emailed the below note. Maybe some of you have answers to these questions. I will email their support and ask them to post in this forum.

Text of email:
Does purchasing a Realname help on other terms on MSN or just the one purchased?

Why is "showtime shoes" $49 and "showtime dance shoes" $598?

What is the difference in difficulty level of typing "showtime dance shoes" vs. "showtimedanceshoes.com"?

If I just type "showtimedanceshoes" in the address bar, the #1 result is my site. What benefits am I not seeing?

[ihelpyou]

You are only paying for the phrase you pay for as far as I know. Nothing else.

The difference is no one would search for that phrase as one word. If you check on www.wordtracker.com you can see that the 2 or 3 word phrase is searched on and the other is not. That is a big difference. No need to be ranked high on your domain as very few will search on it and besides, you should always be #1 for your exact domain anyway.

[markymark]

David,

Who wants $598 for showtime dance shoes. At realnames.com, I thought the top price was the review fee plus the annual fee. Neither of these are $598.00 .

Personally, I don't rate this program. I think on the regular MSN search, it is very easy to ignore the realname listing as it only consists of a title and the proportion of people who search through the IE address bar isn't very large.

In fact, these keywords will discourage people from searching this way as you simply get re-directed to one site without a choice.

[buckworks.com]

No need to be ranked high on your domain as very few will search on it and besides, you should always be #1 for your exact domain anyway.
At the moment I'm ranking #31 in Google for "buckworks," my own domain name. With one exception, all the sites above me all contain the word because they're linking to something in my site. I rank better than that for "online shopping" -- go figure!

For what it's worth, Ken Evoy, author of Make Your Site Sell, tells his affiliates that RealNames is unlikely to be a cost-effective investment. I believe him.

Elisabeth Archambault