Search engine marketing:

Note: click on links in blue text for more info.

If you want to be seen online then you need to be as close to the top of the tree as possible, try it now for your industry, example, fashion. Do this: go to Google, (www.google.co.uk) and type in the word fashion click search, a lot of sites will come up. However, if you enter fashion dress or fashion girls cotton dress then that narrows down the search considerably. This is targeted searching and websites can be designed with this in mind plus many other factors to improve your website position and pagerank (what is pagerank?)

Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising:

Whenever you visit a search engine and do a search, you will be directed to a webpage, that will have short descriptions and links to other websites that may be of interest to you. Take google for example, the top positions and those on the right of most searches will have sponsored listings (Sponsored Google Listings). This simply means that the website owner has paid to have their site advertised in that position. Any website that follows Googles advertising rules can be listed and positions depend on the amount you, the customer are willing to pay for a (Pay Per Click (PPC) position.

Search engine optimisation (SEO):

The main search engines have billions of websites and depending on your genre, you will have a lot of competiton. Nearly all websites, especially new ones will be at the bottom of the tree and no one will know your site exists unless they want to spend months searching the net. As a result specialists in SEO have sprung up and can improve your websites ranking in order to be listed in the top 30 websites for your industry. This is by no means an easy task and anyone that tells you it is easy is actually misleading you. The fact is many parameters have to be considered in detail and a lot of work has to be done. It can easily take 6-12 months before you see your website within the top 30 positions, this doesn't come cheap and you can expect to pay£3-20k to see your site rank highly. However, once the hard work is done, you receive, effectively, free advertising, since any customer that searches for your keywords, will find your site. Most people decide to go with the PPC option, as this is both fast and for an expert, relatively easy.

Don't be fooled, however by companies that tell you they will place your website into the top 30 and make it sound as if it's SEO work they are going to do, in fact they will more than likely be promoting PPC. There is nothing wrong in promoting PPC but it is an entirely different process to SEO, which is more like planting seeds in a garden, nurturing and waiting for the plants & trees etc to grow, this require care and attention and above all lots of time and effort (more on SEO).