Search Engine Marketing is composed of two very different elements. Search engine optimization (SEO), strictly speaking, is about improving your natural search engine rankings through tweaking your web site. Pay-per-click (PPC) programs on the other hand are based on the ability to pay for placement. Even Google has separated the two on its search results, with natural search results appearing on the left side, and paid search results appearing on the right. When you’re fighting today’s competition to improve your web-site ranking, you need to use every tool in your arsenal. One of those tools is paid inclusion. But there’s a lot of confusion around paid inclusion and when it should be used. Very often, paid inclusion is confused with paid placement. They’re very different strategies.
Pay for inclusion, pay per click, and all other types of fee-based services are widely debated in SEO circles. But of those, pay-for-inclusion services are probably the most controversial. Pay for inclusion is considered by some to be just this side of unethical, and it’s only just this side because it’s such a widely practiced strategy. However, there is a time for paid-inclusion services. The thing to remember with paid inclusion is that unless you’re using it properly, you’re just wasting money. Because paid-inclusion services don’t guarantee your rank in search results, it’s not a strategy that you’ll want to use for all your search engine optimization. In truth, using paid inclusion for even most of your pages will result mostly in a loss of budget that would be better spent on more effective (or at least better guaranteed) SEO efforts.
