In her new book "Search Engine Advertising, Buying Your Way to the Top to Increase Sales", Internet marketing veteran Catherine Seda claims that the growing expense of getting popular keywords is making paying for placement on search engines less inviting than it was before, and that good returns on investment are still there, but increasingly with second and third choice keywords and phrases.
According to Seda, too many companies are bidding on the same keywords and, so, advertisers need to expand their keyword lists to include less competitive terms. She explains that phrases won't typically yield the traffic single keywords get, but they're worth bidding on, and adds that more targeted phrases generally bring in very qualified prospects, which means the profitability on those terms is higher.
Seda believes that there's still a lot of gold to be found in pay-per-placement advertising but more digging for valuable keywords is required, and cites that, in August, several advertisers' maximum bids on Overture exceeded $2.00 per click for the keyword "flowers." However, a number one position could be secured for just $.27 per click for "calla lily."
