Nov 8, 2007 at 7:46am ET by Aaron Wall
Google adamantly denies that payment influences organic search engine rankings. In an ideal world that might be true, but exposure begets exposure. Here are some of the cheapest and fastest ways to get your message to the top of the search results without paying for every click.
Press releases for Google Universal Search
Some mainstream news sites syndicate press releases from well-known press release sites. In spite of top ranking pages having hundreds of thousands of inbound links, Google has chosen to rank some of these press releases above topical authority sites for core category related keywords.
These rankings typically only last a few days, but if you time that ranking against a large seasonal search demand, you are going to get a bunch of targeted traffic.
If you find a mainstream media site that archives your press release indefinitely, you can link to your press release on their site to help send the page link juice in hopes of helping the page rank for a longer period of time.
You pay anywhere from $100 to $1000 to distribute your press release, and if the mainstream media picks up your message, you stand a good chance of leeching off the authority of a trusted site to rank quickly.
Video content for Google Universal Search
If you upload a video to YouTube or Google Video, get many people to watch it, and get a few people to syndicate and rate it, then that video might be mixed near the top of Google’s search results for related search queries.
Unlike press releases that see rankings quickly come and go, these videos stay mixed in the search results for a longer period of time.
By submitting videos to Google you are buying the organic placement by allowing Google to host your information, helping Google conquer a new market and giving them future ad inventory.
Buying PPC ads for linkbait pages
If you create high quality content and can’t wait for word to spread on its own, by creating content for important topics related to your business and buying PPC ads for the associated set of keywords, you can target Google’s traffic stream for a specific topic.
Some of these people may link to your site, helping you build a bunch of high authority links for far less than what they would cost to rent. Last year one of my websites was mentioned in multiple newspapers for less than a $500 AdWords spend.
In time, if you pick up enough of these links, your site can exhibit a self reinforcing behavior in the organic search results.
Buying old sites that already rank well
If a site is already trusted by Google and ranks in Google but is mismanaged, you might be able to buy it for a fraction of the value of the traffic stream it gets. Buy it, refurbish it, market it, and watch your traffic acquisition costs drop like a rock while your profits soar.
Buying websites and fixing them up can’t be considered search spam, in my opinion; otherwise, Google would be penalizing itself for mixing YouTube pages at the top of their search results after they purchased the web site.
Opinions expressed in the article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land.
100% Organic covers SEO and issues related to being listed in the free, natural or "organic" listings in search engines. Columnists write about optimization techniques,duplicate content and potentialspam issues, how to submit to search engines and more. The 100% Organic column appears weekly at Search Engine Land.To get this column via email or feed, visit our columns page.
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