Which Search company should I use?

OregonCoastFSBO

Hi everyone,
I`m sure this has asked, but wanted to get opinions on what I should do for SEO.  My site is about to go live and I was thinking about Yahoo! Search and Google Adwords.  First off...my business is an advertising / marketing service for home sellers who don`t want to go through a realtor.  My fee includes a nice color listing on the website and a professional yard sign and also advertising of site in local newspaper.  This in on the Oregon Coast.
I want out-of-towners to find my site.  I have a modest budget and have five or six search terms that I want to use.  What do you get more for your money in your opinion?  Adwords or Yahoo!?  Or should I divide my budget between the two.  Thanks for any help.
Ryan Phillips
ryan.phillips@oregoncoastfsbo.net

Chuck

Hi Ryan - just a quick point of clarification, SEO refers to `search engine optimization`, which describes the methods of building your site so that it can be indexed in all the major search engines, with an eye toward strategically using relevant keywords so that your site might rank well in what are called the `organic` search results in Google, Yahoo, et al.Those positions in the search results pages, and the resulting clicks, cost you nothing once you`ve achieved that status.  Google AdWords and Yahoo Search Marketing are the paid listing options both of those search engines offer, so that you can pay for placement within those same search results (with the ads running along the right side of the screen, or in some cases at the top of the search results in a clearly defined advertising box).I would say that, given your market and the specific niche you`re targeting, you should consider doing both search optimization and search advertising to promote your site.  As Vicki points out, you can be up and running with some search advertising extremely quickly, and be driving traffic to your site the same day - with the added benefit that it`s very trackable, and thus easy to test and refine.But given the fact that your target market is Oregon real estate, I would imagine there are competitive openings in the organic search results that would provide an opportunity for your site to rank well in the natural search results.Just touching back on the advertising, I would advise starting with both Google and Yahoo; set a similar budget, start your campaigns, and then evaluate, test, refine, evaluate, test, refine, evaluate...you get the idea.  You`ll probably find there`s a distinct difference between the traffic and results you receive from both engines.  Different keywords might perform differently in the two engines.  The demographics of their users differ, so it`s not unlikely one will outshine the other, but you won`t know until you test it - please let us know how it goes in this forum!