We live in an age where people use search engines on a daily basis to find information, products or services. Website owners want to be found on the first page of results. In order to obtain this position, search engines have to make the decision that your site deserves that place. While there may be many pieces of the puzzle to accomplish this, the most important is to make sure your site is "search engine friendly".

Search engines like content or plain old html text. They do not recognize how aesthetically pleasing your site is but rather will digest the content of your site to understand its subject matter. As long as there is good content within your pages, it doesn't matter where it is - search engines will find it. So the challenge then is not "where" to place content but simply to have enough in the first place.

Google, Yahoo and MSN (Bing) offer two ways to list your site. Normal Listings where Search Engine Optimization is used and the other is Sponsored Listings where you can buy your listing or ranking.

Depending on the competition for a search phrase or keywords, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can cost several hundred a month. What keywords you decide to get rank is paramount to driving qualified visitors to your site. If you own a travel agency, generating sales on the single word "travel" will be more difficult and quite costly than the key phrase "Caribbean Cruises." Remember that single keywords return the least targeted leads. If someone is searching on the single keyword "travel" are they:

     a. Helping their child with a paper on some aspect of "travel"
     b. Looking for the "travel channel"
     c. Looking to plan a vacation cruise?
     d. Looking for directions for their travel across the country?

Search engines read your site's text or "crawl" your site for relevance and popularity. Relevance is determined by an algorithm calculating the number of keywords and similar words on your site. Popularity is determined by how many other sites link to yours. There are hundreds of search engines available, but Google, Yahoo, and MSN (Bing) produce 80% of the traffic on the internet.

We partner with Network Solutions and since they are a successful internet marketing company, we have found their tools produce good results. Marketing plans start at $40.00 a month to get ranked in local directories (i.e. San Antonio).

An immediate way to get a top ranking is to buy your listing. The cost can be a 10 cents per click up to a few dollars per click, but you have control on the monthly maximum you will spend. You could cap the maximum for pay-per-click allowance at $10.00 a day or $300.00 a month. Below are two companies that allow you to buy advertising. One is Overture which sells advertising for Yahoo & MSN and the other is Google adWords which sells advertising for Google.

When you buy advertising with Overture, you set the price you're willing to pay for each sales lead and pay only when your customers click through to your site. For more information about Overture call toll free 866-631-9293 or click here.

With Google adWords you create your own ads, choose keywords to help match your ads to your audience and pay only when someone clicks on them. For more information about Google AdWords' call toll free 866-246-6453 or click here.