What is Paid Inclusion and Can It Work For You?

Did you know that there are approximately 100 billion URLs out there—and Google, Yahoo!, and MSN only list around eight billion?

Given this fact, chances are slim that your site will be seen prominently—and that’s even with good SEO and SEM in place.

Enter one of the three components under the search engine marketing model to help with this challenge: paid inclusion. Simply, this is the act of paying an SE company to guarantee inclusion/placement of your site in search results.

There are three types of paid inclusion:

1. Paid Inclusion - Ensures that pages from your site are listed in a search engine’s database and re-spidered on a regular basis. No guarantee is promised for placement in SE rankings.

2. Paid Submission – Allows you to pay directories to review your site and get evaluated. The five key players are Yahoo!, FAST, AltaVista, and the LookSmart Directories. (Note: Free submission players include ISEDB, but only those offering free services qualify.)

3. Paid Placement - Enables a high-ranking listing for| particular search terms, via a flat fee or pay per click.

Next time, we will continue our discussion with the pros and cons of paid inclusion.