Search Engine Marketing News May 9 2001

We are writing to keep you informed about some major changes in search engine marketing and to bring you up to date on activities at Webconsuls. Please read this newsletter carefully as it contains information that can keep you ahead of your competition.

Paid Registrations

Paid Search Engine Reviews

There is a growing trend toward paid search engine registration. We have an article on our website which we encourage you to read. You will soon be receiving your latest Position Report from Webconsuls. There will also be an email with recommendations from Webconsuls on paid registrations for you.

Many of the most popular search engines - Yahoo, Looksmart, Excite etc. essentially require paid registrations for commercial sites. You pay a fee to have someone look at the site and determine if it should be included in the directory. The fee is paid whether or not the site is included.

Pay Per Click

Another growing area is the so-called pay-per-click search engine. For these, you bid on a search term and pay your bid if anyone searching on that term clicks to your site. The higher the bid, the higher your position. These engines also partner with other engines to increase your exposure. The best known of this type is GoTo, and several of our clients are registered with GoTo. However GoTo now has a minimum bid of 5 cent per term and a minimum monthly charge of $20 for each site.

We have been researching a new "pay per click engine" that is getting high marks of late. It is called FindWhat.com. There is neither a minimum bid nor any monthly minimum. Since it is so new, many categories are as yet untapped. A bid of $.01 will often place your web site in first.

There is an added benefit. For those web sites occupying a 1st, 2nd or 3rd place position, FindWhat.com guarantees that your site will also be listed on the first page of the Excite.com engine under a category called "sponsored sites." We tested this with two clients this week (five keywords each) and within a few hours, each web site was found on Excite's first page under that keyword! In many cases, our 1st place bid was only a penny. Normally, Excite charges $199 to review submissions. This seems like a good deal.

If you are interested in either of these, you should first visit the site at GoTo or FindWhat and search on the terms that interests you. The results will show the bid to obtain the top spots.

Inktomi Paid Submission

The last new service that we want to mention is a paid submission service to Inktomi. Inktomi is used primarily by other Search Engines for Indexing. When a site gets listed on Inktomi, it becomes immediately accessible to 125 Web search partners including AOL, iWon, MSN & HotBot. For an interim period only, Webconsuls will register one or more Web Pages for our clients for only $16.00/per page. If you are not now listed on the Inktomi partner engines, then you are encouraged to do this as we think it is very cost effective. The Inktomi registration fee is an annual charge.

Webconsuls Search Engine Friendly Website Developments

Site Designs/Redesigns

Webconsuls continues to turn out new/redesigned web sites at an increasing pace. Please consider us in helping you with page updates, completes site redesigns, database capabilities, or e-commerce/shopping cart additions. You'll find our pricing to be extremely competitive and our workmanship of the highest quality. Recent site completions include:
Newport Channel Inn, Newport Beach, CA

Kauai Vacation Home, Poipu, HI

HOSPITALITY PROPERTY "FOR SALE" MARKETING

Helfand-Enterprises, a division of Webconsuls, LLC is engaged in assisting property owners and/or realtor-brokers to bring attention to properties for sale. We use our Internet Marketing expertise to help property owners sell their hospitality property. This is entirely a risk-free program that is enjoying excellent reviews from participants. There are no fees of any kind unless and until we find a buyer for you and additionally, we create a "for sale" web page at no cost. Examples of pages we've created can be viewed here.

BUSINESS SALES ONLINE

At the request of several commercial brokers, Webconsuls is about to launch a new service to list businesses for sale on-line. The concept will be modeled after the successful hospitality property program. We are still ironing out a few details. If you have a business to sell and are interested, please contact us.

Dennis Helfand and Dick Fay, Managing Partners.