How to get into Overture for free

[pschlegel]

I recently got several listings into Overture for free
based on some ideas I got from Markus Allen (he
actually has about 5,000 pages in Overture for
free).

I'm wondering if this is common knowledge?

The strategy is based on the fact that Overture is
supposed to try to provide at least 40 listings for a
keyword. And if they don't get bids on all 40, they
start to back-fill from other sources (one of which
now is Inktomi which you can get into for free).

What I did was the following:

1) I looked for keywords relevant to my business
using WordTracker and other similar tools.

2) I ran a competition analysis on Overture bids
through WordTracker to see which keywords had
less than 40 paid listings. Surprisingly I found quite
a few where I could get a top ten listing for free. And
even some decent traffic keywords in the top 3.

3) I then optimized my pages for Inktomi.

The first time I tried this I paid the Inktomi inclusion
fee because I was dying to see how it would work and
got a top 30 listing within 48 hours (a so-so result).

But since then, I've been able to optimize better and
just let Inktomi find me and have gotten several top
ten listings this way for keywords generating traffic of
between 200 - 1,000 unique visitors per month. I haven't
gotten top 3 listings yet, but have seen several free ones
in Overture (the "additional listings" ones) so I know it's
possible.

Is this old-hat? I was pretty surprised by it. I'd be curious
as to what other people think about this strategy? Is
anyone using it on any pay per click search engines besides
Overture?

Paul Schlegel

[Lynn Terry]

[pschlegel]

[Lynn Terry]