Paid Inclusion – Costs vs Benefits

In your quest to optimise your website and reach that all important page one on the search engine rankings list, should you consider Paid Inclusion? Is the money you pay for this marketing technique really worthwhile?

Here we discuss this topic a bit further, beginning with the actual definition and then taking a look at the benefits of paid inclusion versus the cost.

Defining Paid Inclusion

According to Wikipedia, paid inclusion refers to “a search engine marketing product where the search engine company charges fees related to inclusion of websites in their search index. Paid inclusion products are provided by most search engine companies, the most notable exception being Google”.

Simply put, paid inclusion allows your website to get page one rankings on the search engines for particular keywords, as opposed to getting there through organic SEO techniques. As Wikipedia states, Google is the most important search engine to consider, but there are others, such as MSN, Yahoo, and even the new Bing which warrant attention as well.

The Pros And Cons Of Paid Inclusion

Certainly if you were to launch a Paid Inclusion marketing campaign with all of the major search engines it would end up taking a big chunk out of your online advertising budget. You pay a per-click fee each time your listing appears, or you could choose to simply list your website for a year and pay one lump sum. Depending on the popularity of the keywords you select, this fee could run into the thousands of dollars. This is a definite con, unless you have a very large budget.

Another con is that with some search engines, such as the almighty Google, your paid inclusion actually shows up as an advertisement. This lets web surfers know right away that you paid for placement and your listing did not come up organically. In the consumer’s mind, this could be seen as an unfair advantage or cause them to categorise your differently because your rank is not a direct result of natural relevancy to their search.

On the pro side, paid inclusion means your site is going to be exposed to a far larger internet audience. If you pay particular attention to the scheduling of your listing and ensure that your ad or listing comes up only in relevant searches, you are more likely to benefit from paid inclusion. It is also important to change the content of your ads frequently. This shows the consumer that there is someone doing behind-the-scenes work and your site is less likely to be glazed over.

Another benefit of paid inclusion is that, much like a straight pay per click campaign, you are able to perform some split testing. Try two or more different ads based on the same keywords at one time and determine which one benefits your site more. This information can be used in a variety of ways to narrow down future advertising efforts.

Perhaps the best Paid Inclusion option for SEO on your website is to start paid inclusion with one major search engine and do it for a month. See what it brings you in terms of sales and determine the ROI. You may quickly find out that it is not worthwhile; then again an increase in sales might pay the cost and increase your profits. Start small and slow and remember to include other SEO techniques in your efforts to increase and maintain search engine rankings.