Everyone and their brother is a Search Engine Marketing Expert nowadays. My brother in law read a book about SEO last week and all of a sudden he’s telling me how to market my web site (at a substantial discount of course) and I’ve been studying and implementing SEO campaigns for years. Yep, so many experts are popping up everywhere trying to show me things I already know. My competition knows it too. In an environment where more and more people are studying and implementing SEO, how do you get a unique market advantage when the space is limited on the first page of Google?

If all the claims by the search engine gurus promising top placement were true, would there ever be any hope outside of them and their services? There’s only so much room at the top.

What about Pay Per Click? You can pay top dollar with PPC but, from the experience of many, its like a crap-shoot . Sometimes it works and then other times it fails to provide good ROI. All the while your credit card is getting dinged.

Here’s a dirty little secret that you may already be aware of: Did you know that all one of your competitors has to do is just sit there and click away on your ad - or ever more dastardly, pay some to do it for them - and your cost will go through the roof? Even with the so-called click fraud detection on the search engines, most click fraud is not filtered. PPC is Pay Per Click not Pay Per Visit. Think it doesn’t happen? Think again

So what’s a good alternative? One emerging alternative is to use Unique Placement toolbar networks to guarantee your position and traffic at a fixed cost.

Unique Placement markets sponsorships on various toolbar networks that enable advertisers to dominate fractions of the marketplace by inserting their company below the toolbar but above the Google, Yahoo, and MSN top search results - essentially creating a visual number one position - 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The sponsorships, by design, are limited to toolbar users who enjoy enhanced search features and appealing tools not available on most standard Yahoo and Google toolbars, however, these toolbars are able to provide top positions on Google, Yahoo, and MSN (as well as others) at a fraction of the higher paid sponsorships.

In one recent case study, a Realtor who was paying an average of $2.50 per click to acquire a site visitor, found a far better cost for visitors to their web site using toolbar sponsorships. By leveraging Unique Placements toolbar network, they were able to lower CPV (cost per visitor) substantially.

Leveraging toolbar networks is one way that you can get featured on the top of major search engines without breaking the bank.

What’s in it for you? Why allocate some advertising and marketing dollars to toolbar sponsorships? By doing so, it allows you to not only get a guaranteed traffic and position on Google, but focus on what you do best and growing your business. You can follow up on leads instead of trying to generate them.

Don’t fall victim to all the so called SEO/PPC gurus that promise the world but rather cost you a fortune. There is an easier and more affordable way.