Internet marketing can be broken down in to two main categories, sponsored links and search engine optimization. Sponsored links involve either paying a third party a flat rate to host an advert or link to your website, much like placing an advert in a newspaper or magazine, or paying a certain amount of money to them only when someone actually clicks on the link (which is referred to as pay-per-click). By paying for sponsored links you can get the exposure you want with immediate effect, the downside being that it can soon become expensive, and once you stop paying, your prominent positions will disappear as quickly as they arrived.

Search engine optimization (or just SEO) is the process of obtaining rankings in the search engines on the basis of the quality and popularity of your website. SEO is the preferable method of internet marketing over sponsored links because, following the initial investment, you continue to get visitors to your website for very little outlay, and quite possibly even for free. SEO has several different elements, but the first step is to establish what exact search terms, also known as keywords or keyphrases, your potential customers are using when searching for your products and services online. It also allows you to identify and target specific niches. For example, approximately 3 times as many people search for kitchen door handles each month as internal door handles, despite them being essentially the same item.

On-site optimization is the next SEO consideration. This process involves altering page names, headings and tags to include your chosen keywords and phrases. This is necessary so that the search engine robots (known as spiders) can determine what your website is about. Content is also rewritten to incorporate the keywords that you want to rank highly in the search engines for, and often you will see individual pages optimized to target one specific keyword, or keyword phrase.

It is important to remember that content must also be well written for any human visitor. You need great content; not only will it convince potential customers to buy your product or service, but informative, exciting content is often shared among the web via blog and article sites, and each time your content is referred to you will likely get a link pointing to your website. Each back link from an established, good quality website is regarded by the search engines as a vote for the quality of your own, and the more links you get, the higher you will rank for your chosen keywords.

SEO never stands still for long. Google, which accounts for the vast majority of search traffic on the web, is continually changing the algorithms it uses to determine which websites should be ranked in which positions, and with the emergence of new surfing habits, such as the popularity of Facebook and Twitter, the field of SEO will no doubt continue to develop as it keeps paces with these changes.

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