Paying for Inclusion in the Search Engines and
Directories: PFI, PFP, PPC and Trusted Feed
It seems that everywhere we turn these days in the search engine
marketing world, we are constantly hearing the phrases
pay-for-inclusion (PFI), pay-for-performance (PFP) and pay-per-click (PPC).
Here is a quick primer to explain what each of those programs means.
Pay-for-Inclusion
For the past few years, many of the search engines (except Google)
have offered a simple PFI model so you could speed up the indexing of
any page of your site by paying a fee. This fee covered a year of
inclusion in the search engine database plus frequent respidering of
the page, if it met with the engines' quality requirements.
Many human-edited directories have also offered PFI programs in order
to list your site.
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For instance, if you have a business or any type of
commercial site, you have to pay Yahoo $299 for them to consider your
site for inclusion in their directory. Once reviewed by their editors,
if they believe your site is up to snuff, they'll then add it to the
directory, and you simply have to pay a yearly fee to keep it there.
My personal feeling is that a Yahoo directory listing is not as
beneficial as it used to be, however. In fact, we've had many forum
discussions about this. For more info, please read this discussion at
the High Rankings Forum.
Pay-per-Click
The search engines also offer PPC programs where you purchase ads that
show up at the top, side or below the search results for the specific
keyword phrases you bid on. Google Adwords and Overture are the best
known of these programs. Ads that you place with these companies show
up at the search engines as well as many content sites (if that option
is turned on). Generally they are labeled as "sponsored" or "featured"
results.
In March 2004, Yahoo announced their new Overture Site Match(tm)
program that combines PFI with PPC. They still offer their traditional
PPC sponsor ad program, but they no longer offer a simple PFI program.
Now, if you want to speed up your inclusion in Yahoo and its search
properties and partners (currently AltaVista, FAST, Yahoo and some of
MSN), you'll have to pay a fee for each URL that you want included,
PLUS 15 or 30 cents (depending on your category) for every
clickthrough to your site.
There are three important things to note about this program:
1) The money you spend goes solely towards placing your site into the
search databases, and enabling 48-hour respidering of your page
content. You can pay them all you want, but this program is not going
to give you a higher ranking, so keep that in mind.
2) It's *not* actually necessary to pay to be listed. Yahoo is not
removing pages that aren't paid for, and they continue to add new
pages for free. Their spider (Slurp) is constantly on the crawl for
new information, and new pages are in fact getting added fairly
quickly these days - again, for free.
3) If your site has been around for a while and other sites are
linking to it, chances are that your pages are already included in
their database for free. Beware of paying for what you already have,
and then paying for every click thereafter.
You can check whether your pages are already included in Yahoo's
database by going to Yahoo and typing into their search box the
following command:
site:www.yoursite.com (be sure not to leave a space after the colon in
site:www).
When you see the list of results, find the one that has a link that
says "More pages from this site" and then click on that link. That
should give you a general idea of how many pages of your site are
already indexed. If it appears that they've got most or all of your
pages, then you're all set -- no need to pay!
Trusted XML Feeds
One additional way to pay Yahoo to include your pages across their
search network is called "trusted XML feeds" (sometimes just "trusted
feed," or "XML data feeds").
This service is generally reserved for very large, dynamically
generated ecommerce sites that add or change products frequently. With
trusted feed, you don't have to pay a submission fee for each page you
want to include, just a pay-per-click fee. The benefit of trusted feed
is that many of the Yahoo/Overture feed partners will actually
optimize your XML feeds for you. I've worked with PositionTech for one
of my large clients, and they provide this service at no extra cost.
Also, you can turn off your feeds at any time if they don't appear to
be providing you with a positive ROI, so be sure to track your clicks
and conversions to make sure you're not just throwing your money down
the drain.
My personal opinion on paying to play is that for most sites, paid
inclusion is not something it is necessary to sign up for. However, I
do believe there are many benefits to running PPC ad campaigns. If
there are certain keyword phrases you're having trouble ranking highly
with in the regular search results, a PPC campaign is a great way to
maintain your site's exposure. PPC also comes in handy as a way to
gauge interest in your site, as well as its products and services. It
also makes a nice tool for judging which keyword phrases people are
typing into the engines, as well as which ones do a better job
converting your visitors into buyers.
So I give a thumbs-down to paid-inclusion (with or without paying for
clicks) and a thumbs-up to PPC campaigns. With a thumb squarely in the
middle for XML feeds depending on your particular site needs!
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