I'd be surprised if you got any significant search engine results from Google within the first seven or eight months although you may attract some visitors from Yahoo and MSN search. The bottom line is: if you're looking to kick-start the popularity of your website then you should really consider buying visitors initially.
1) Pay per click
Probably the most popular way of bringing in visitors en masse is paying to appear in search engine results if certain phrases have been searched for. Google Adwords is by far the market leader in this format of advertising. All you have to do is sign up, make a small deposit to activate your account, choose your keywords, select how much you're willing to pay per click (this denotes how high you'll appear in the paid advertising results for your keywords) and select a maximum daily budget. Easy! Just pay attention to your budget and make sure that you can make a long-term profit.
Other increasingly popular pay-per-click advertising is offered by MSN AdCenter and Yahoo Search Marketing, which both operate in an extremely similar manner to Google Adwords. There are other products available such as Clicksor or Oxado, where the amount that you have to pay per click may be less. However, on the down side, the amount of visitors that such smaller networks can refer to you will probably be less. It's probably best to start with Google Adwords, and experiment with others should you wish to do so.
2) Pay per lead
If you're going to be offering a product or service then it's worthwhile considering pay-per-lead. This means that you pay when you receive specific information from prospective customers such as a name, email address, telephone number and location. The most popular integrator of this service in America is Commission Junction (CJ.com), while Trade Doubler is particularly popular in Europe.
3) Pay per transaction
Paying a percentage of a transaction fee to whoever refers you the customer is appealing because it's virtually impossible to make a loss. However, this may not be too appealing for whoever is advertising your website, as they don't know the likelihood of a sale being generated and they don't know how often a sale will be made. This method of promoting your product or service should be considered as part of a more extensive marketing strategy. Again, two of the most popular players in this field are CJ.com and TradeDoubler.com.
4) Buy text links
Although frowned upon by the major search engines, a purchased link is actually often indistinguishable from organically grown links. As long as the link points directly to the intended web page and not to a third party provider, this should grant you a higher ranking in a search engine. You should also read other articles on linking strategy before proceeding with participating in a link purchasing campaign. Once you have decided that this is for you, trial a campaign with Text Link Ads.
About the author
David Bain is founder of the independent
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www.BuildYourOwnBusiness.biz. BuildYourOwnBusiness offers the latest business news & management advice on how best to build your own business - business articles on Strategy, eBusiness, Change Management & much, much more.
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