Search engine marketing involves managing ongoing marketing programs very similar to a national yellow pages book. It was not worth doing until 2002, and is still relatively new.

When a person performs a search at an engine, there are typically free listings on the left-hand side of the page and paid advertising on the top and to the right. It is very hard to manipulate the free search engine listings, but that hasn’t stopped a cottage industry from trying. With standard SEO, advertisers have no dependable control and can spend thousands of dollars trying to chase Google’s ever-changing spider algorithms. Natural/organic SEO offers no guaranteed results.

On the top and right-hand side of the page are the paid search ads. Paid search is controlled by a bidding system that changes constantly 24 hours a day. Advertisers control the wording of the title, description and corresponding URL that appear in the engines. They control the keywords and phrases that point customers to their website and control the rank primarily by bid, but secondarily by ad and website relevance and quality. Advertisers do not pay for something that used to be free. There is real value in the difference. What you are paying for compared to what used to be available for free is a consistent, reliable marketing vehicle that costs money just like any other reliable adverting does. Advertisers are paying for their listing to be displayed only if someone clicks on their ad.