A very first SEO idea: how to have a number one listing on Google, a sponsored link from Google (thus some good traffic), all for free? (an unorthodox solution)

This blog post is simple: I’ll show some things about getting some free traffic to your web site (I admit, it’s untargeted). You’ll get it via a mix of organic results and sponsored results (see this blog photo for details on what these represent). It’s a method I don’t recommend, but I want you to be aware of. (a case study)
Let’s have a simple case study via a real story which happened to me yesterday. I was visiting the favorite forum of mine (it’s in Romanian). I see a Google ad. I notice it’s a free ad (see the Google Grants UK for details on such ads, free to NGOs). The ad was exactly like this:

I click on it. The ad led me to a search engine results page (SERP) by Google for the “unde este expusa pasarea maiastra” keywords. (translation – Where is Pasarea Maiastra exhibited) It is a search on Romanian pages, via the Romanian version of Google – Google.ro.

And here comes the trick: when looking on the results page, you can see that on the very first spot a company doing a trick. They have created a web page designed specifically for this query (a very low competition query, I might add), and they show no relevant results for the specified query:

Actually, the page lists right about every offer they have made regarding touristic attractions, but nothing on the query. The page has a huge listing of tourism-related results, but nothing useful for the searcher.

So, what can you learn from what they did?
1. Google sometimes chooses to show Social advertising made for free (if there are no relevant ads to show, it might do that by default);
2. Some of the ads are for Google itself;
3. Some ads for Google contain easy-to-fight-for-and-win queries (you can easily get on #1 spot in there); Google creates these ads so that the query they link to are, initially, full of worthy results;
4. (here’s were you come in) If traffic is all you’re interested in, you can get a good traffic for you web site by challenging the Google ads system.

So, what other queries for Google ads are there? I’ve found, using again the XF Forums, the following free ads (Google shows a free ad linking to a page out of these):
http://www.google.ro/search?hl=ro&q=razboiul+de+independenta+al+romaniei&btnG=Caut%C4%83&meta=lr%3Dlang_ro
http://www.google.ro/search?hl=ro&q=cromozomi+genomul+uman&btnG=Caut%C4%83&meta=lr%3Dlang_ro
http://www.google.ro/search?hl=ro&q=de+ce+e+cerul+albastru&btnG=Caut%C4%83&meta=lr%3Dlang_ro
http://www.google.ro/search?hl=ro&q=primul+avion+cu+reactie&btnG=Caut%C4%83&meta=lr%3Dlang_ro
http://www.google.ro/search?hl=ro&q=rase+de+cai&btnG=Caut%C4%83&meta=lr%3Dlang_ro
http://www.google.ro/search?hl=ro&q=reparatii+ceas+cu+cuc&btnG=Caut%C4%83&meta=lr%3Dlang_ro
http://www.google.ro/search?hl=ro&q=helmuth+duckadam&btnG=Caut%C4%83&meta=lr%3Dlang_ro
http://www.google.ro/search?hl=ro&q=unde+este+expusa+pasarea+maiastra&btnG=Caut%C4%83&meta=lr%3Dlang_ro
http://www.google.ro/search?hl=ro&q=paparuda&btnG=Caut%C4%83&meta=lr%3Dlang_ro

Some words are easy to fight for (it’s easy to get a #1 positioning on “reparatii ceas cu cuc”), some are harder. But it’s pretty easy to get a top 10 results, and for some queries, even a #1 spot. Thus, you can get good traffic out of this.

This blog post is about Romanian ads. I’m sure there is a related program for other languages.

About the ethics: Google should check on the ads from time to time and change the ads if the results are obviously manipulated. It’s somewhat Google’s fault for this artificially-created and easily-manipulated traffic. Also, it’s unethical for a tourism company to get traffic for an unrelated phrase. It should at least say some words on the query, words to be useful. The users don’t get what they’ve searched for. But all-in-all, if traffic is all you care for, you don’t care about the value of the customers, the example above shows how can one make this thing work. All of this with Google’s help.

I don’t recommend it, you will surely get some users upset, perhaps you will even trigger set some Google alarms (exclusion?), some bloggers will give you as a bad example (me included), but your traffic goal will be reached. I must say, this is terrible for branding.

I just wanted to share with you a method in which some users get visits.