You like the traffic you’re getting from Google and Yahoo, but you would like to see more. Where do you go?
The second-tier pay-per-click search engine industry has gotten its share of attention from the public markets and from private investors lately, and for a reason. For years, these second-tier companies like Miva, Enhance, Epilot and Findology have provided quality traffic to advertisers’ sites, filling the need for wanted inventory.
Not all second-tier search engine companies work for everyone. In most cases, the quality of traffic is not as good as the leading engines, quantity sometimes is limited and it requires additional time to manage. But if you find the right strategy, they can help your business.
The truth behind these pay-per-click search engine companies is that conversion rates tend to be a bit lower, but because bid prices are just as low, you end up with a similar ROI to the top two engines.
Advertising agencies are even starting to get in on the mix by adding these second-tier engines to their list of traffic sources that they can provide to their clients.
But how do these engines generate traffic? Unlike Google and Yahoo, the second-tier engines rely on distribution partners – publishers – to generate traffic to their advertisers. With a combination of niche Web sites and smaller search properties, these pay-per-click engines are providing billions of qualified searches to advertisers nationwide.
Many of these companies in the second-tier market are even moving to generate their own traffic. Many have spent quite a bit of money buying either search, domain name or desktop properties, and some are working to develop and implement niche content of their own to deliver to their consumers.
Though Google and Yahoo continue to lead the pack, they are limited by the traffic that they can provide to their advertisers. The second-tier pay-per-click search engine industry fills that void.
For more articles from The Direct Marketer’s Essential Guide to Search Engine Marketing, visit http://www.dmnews.com/cgi-bin/artcategory.cgi?category_id=22
A PDF of the guide is available at: http://www.dmnews.com/pdffiles/semguide.pdf
