A web search engine is a system that allows you to find and retrieve information from the World Wide Web. There are currently many search engines that are used by people and a few of the popular ones include Google, Yahoo and MSN. They look and function in similar ways.
When a marketer wants to drive targeted traffic from the search engines, he can do it via one or two methods – Pay-Per-Click Marketing and Search Engine Optimization.
(1) Pay-Per-Click Marketing (Paid Search)
Pay-per-click (PPC) marketing is a form of paid search that allows a website owner to pay the search engine to have its ad shown when a relevant keywords is searched or entered. These paid ads appear as ‘Sponsored Links’ on the right side (and sometimes top side) of the search engine when a keyword is entered. (Please refer to the picture below.)
(2) Search Engine Optimization (Organic Search)
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a technique that allows you to influence the ranking of your webpages on the organic listing of a seach engine, also known as the natural search results. Web pages that appear on the top 10 of the natural listings are considered the most "relevant" pages for the keyword in question. The results are found on the left side of the search engine (as shown below).
