Q and A: What alternatives are there to Google AdWords and Yahoo! Search Marketing?

Dear Kalena...

I run a small scrap-booking business from home and I use pay per click advertising to sell some of my patterns and page creation kits. However I'm finding that the search keywords I'm bidding on are often too expensive for me to appear in the top results and I am often outbid by my competitors.

I'd like to try purchasing my keywords on smaller pay per click providers where the competition may not be as fierce. What alternatives are there to AdWords and Yahoo! Search Marketing and can you recommend any in particular?

Constance

Kalena's Answer:

Dear Constance

There are many alternative pay per click providers to the big two (Google AdWords and Yahoo! Search Marketing). Here's just a few:

- FindWhat

- Enhance (formerly ah-ha)

- Kanoodle

- Espotting

- 7Search

- GoClick

- ePilot.com

- Lycos Insite AdBuyer

- Search123

As for recommending one over another, I'm not going to do that because I haven't tried them all and results depend widely on your target market and what search sites they use. Remember that you don't necessarily need to appear in the top positions for your ads to attract clicks. Plus, you can run a highly successful PPC campaign on either AdWords or Yahoo! if you conduct methodical keyword research to discover popular search terms that are relevant to your site and haven't yet attracted high bids.

I am actually in the process of researching keywords for my own PPC campaign and this week I uncovered a fantastic tool called Trellian Keyword Discovery that has helped immensely. It collects log files from 40 different search engines worldwide and tracks the keywords your customers are currently using to find products and services like yours. What I find most useful about this tool is the ability to track seasonal keyword search trends and find hot topics and related search terms I hadn't considered before. Check it out, it might assist you too.