One of the growing trends in the past decade is the emergence of dot com companies all over the world.  Nowadays, more and more companies emerge on the Internet and many more people are opening up e-commerce shops and they employ more Internet marketing strategies everyday.  Many people also sign up for affiliate programs so that they can sell products and make commissions in the process.  However, it is not always effective and thus an Internet business needs its website promoted on the Search Engines to receive more traffic.

In order to understand Search Engine Marketing, one must understand the mentality of the search engines and their use.  Nowadays, almost everybody looks up what they need (whether it is a product or a service) on major search engines like Google and Yahoo.  Also, statistical research shows that most people will look at the topmost and the left most of the page for relevant information.  This means that companies that have their names and websites indexed on the top 5 or top 10 in the list will end up getting more clicks and more traffic then any other website with the same content. In fact most users will click the top 5 listings to see if the website contains what they are looking for.

This means that a successful business must have a top ranking in search engines in order to receive the traffic that they may need.  The Internet marketer must be able to guarantee a top spot in Google or Yahoo in order to promote the products.  However, this requires special strategies called Search Engine Optimization.  In SEO (Search Engine Optimization) special procedures are completed so that the Search engines show the site on top.  In order to accomplish this, search engines use programs called spiders to search the website submitted to see the relevant keyword density as well as links from other websites to the website in question. The usage of keywords and titles will allow the search engines to give a mathematical logarithmic ranking, which allows the site to be categorized in its relevance.

Thus search engine marketing is an important part of Internet marketing.  If your website is on top of a search engine listing, then it is almost guaranteed that it will receive hits and traffic from search engines.  However, although having traffic at your website can be a good thing, sometimes it might end up damaging your business.  This is due to the fact that traffic does not always guarantee conversions. Sometimes having lots of traffic may mislead you in to thinking that your business is successful.  You must have an above average conversions in order to count yourself successful.  Also just depending on the search engine traffic can be dangerous, because search engine marketing is always competitive.  This means that although you may rank in the first 5 now, you might end up being in the bottom of the list next week.  Thus search engine marketing should be used with other marketing techniques to generate the conversions that you need.

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