Search Engine Marketing

Search engine marketing is a form of Internet marketing that seeks to promote web sites by increasing their visibility in search engine result pages. There are a variety of methods that can be used to achieve this:

• search engine optimization
• paid placement
• paid inclusion

Search engine optimization is the process of "optimizing" a web site, giving it all of the necessary items needed to rank well in search engines.

Paid placement is also known as "Pay Per Click Advertising", such as advertising on Yahoo or Google. You pay a certain amount every time someone "clicks through" to your web site from the search engine. Think of them as little classified ads. These appear at the top and right of the regular results on search engine pages.

Paid inclusion is paying to be included in another web site. A good example of this is the Yahoo Directory. You pay them a few hundred dollars for them to review your site and possibly include it in their directory. Why is this helpful? Because the directory has many people browsing it and a link in their directory can bring visitors to your site. It's also important for SEO, because a link in the Yahoo Directory is a static link from an important web site.