WEB SITE MARKETING

(This is an article writen for resort owners but the same principles apply to any web site)

Pay Per Click (PPC)
Search Engine Campaigns
Pay per click search engines have been very popular over the past few years and over 50 PPC engines have now hit the market.

Find What?
Overture, which was recently acquired by Yahoo, has by far the largest market share of the PPC engines. Overture incidentally owns Alta Vista (one of the grandfathers of search engine marketing) and Fast or AlltheWeb (arguably the largest index of the web site in the world).

Overture’s nearest competitors are Kanoodle and FindWhat. You may get email from time to time guaranteeing top 3 placements at a set cost for your web site. Well they most often do this via PPC placement and charge a premium for the service.

Oh No – Here Comes The Technical Stuff!
PPC search engines in the simplest of terms is bidding online for the keyword placement of your web site. Think of it as an auction for your site placement. The higher the bid… the higher your placement for your chosen keyword term… and the more traffic you get on your site.
But it comes at a cost. PPC means each time someone clicks through to your site you are paying your bid price for each customer that lands on your site via your PPC listing.
Essentially you are buying your way to the top of the search engine listings.

Multiple Partners Can Be Good!
On Overture your incentive to bid into the top 3 placement positions is you get your site listed at the top of Overtures many partner search engines. If you go on Yahoo or MSN by example you will see the top 3 or 4 listings on the page are “sponsored” listings.. This means the keyword bid was for a specific phrase at a specific click through cost that happened to be one of the highest 3 bids – hence the top 3 “sponsored” placement.

Should Resorts Participate
Many resorts already keyword bid for placement. However it does not replace the fundamentals of optimizing your site for it’s natural position with the search engines. I usually recommend PPC campaigns as a supplemental web marketing strategy. PPC is especially useful to reinforce areas of your business that are not “themed” well on your site. By example, say your resort is focusing on an “Ontario resort vacation” type of theme meaning your keyword use in the site and your programmed title & description reflects that theme. Now what if “winter ice fishing” was a niche part of your business, but one that is not heavily emphasized on your web site? Well you could build a separate ice fishing site or you can keyword bid for the applicable terms like “Ontario ice fishing” to achieve top placement. Of course to start you need to open a bidding account and put in some money up front to draw off of for your bids.

Be Careful
- start small and choose one phrase until you have the hang of it.
- Avoid bidding wars… never bid for top placement for the sake of being the #1 bid for one of the top 3 positions (all 3 positions will get you to the partnership sites)
- Never auto bid… control your bid by “fixing” your price and watch the competitive bids so you can react strategically.
- Check your account daily and set limits on your bidding.
- Drop out if the bidding gets to rich, if you can’t afford to bid into one of the top 3 positions (which gets you on the all important partner sites) then it’s time to find keyword phrases with less competition.
- Carefully choose phrases that are targeted and specific for your market but don’t be so specific that you choke off or restrict targeted traffic e.g. resort vacation (too broad) VS Ontario fishing resort VS Ontario fishing resort vacation (too specific).
- Look for gaps in the bidding or opportunities for good value keyword phrases.


On Overture, minimum bidding starts at 10 cents per click through for your chosen keyword phrase. I rarely pay more than 17 cents for a keyword bid. However in some markets you will routinely find businesses bidding $2 - $3 per click through for some terms. One keyword phrase I am currently bidding for a customer has the business in the #1 position paying $1.05 while my bid for 3rd position is only the 10-cent minimum.

In theory the #1 site in this case is overpaying by 93 cents. You have to keep your eye on the ball when your keyword bidding, so that you don’t over pay or lose your position by underbidding.

First Page SEO currently runs over 300 customer campaigns and bidding customer budgets run from $5 to $300 per month. Keyword bidding with PPC search engines can be extremely effective and rewarding in the resort sector if done properly. Everyone from the smallest of bed & breakfasts to the largest full service resort can participate in their market segment economically – provided you take the time to understand the fundamentals of bidding or hire a knowledgeable professional to do it for you.

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