In recent decades, the World Wide Web became the hottest new venue for marketing and selling products. It provides ease of use and increased competition, which makes for the convenience and low prices that appeal to the millions of consumers who use it. Most of these consumers search the internet using a few major search engines; Google and Yahoo! are the most commonly used. For this reason, many businesses seek to exploit the search engines as an online marketplace. There are two key approaches typically taken in Search Engine Optimitization (SEO).

The first approach is referred to as “Organic” SEO. The biggest advantage with Organic SEO is that it is free. It uses the search engines’ metacrawlers, which are commonly available to everyone. All a business has to do is post their site and the search engine robots will find it. However, there are drawbacks - the search engine’s indexing tool can take up to a year to start ranking your site and it may not rank very high with out the proper key words, inbound links for other sites etc. So hiring an SEO company or reading up on how to position your site is very important.

The second approach is called “Pay-Per-Click” (PPC). With PPC, you pay the search engine to attach your website’s advertisement to relevant searches. The price per click can vary between  $0.10 and $10.00, depending on the industry, the particular keyword, and the rank given to the advertisement. 

 How can a business decide which approach is better? There are, of course several factors to be taken into account. First of all, are the basic requirements in place - does the business have a website, and the necessary budget? Next, the budget must be compared with the business’s online marketing needs. Typically, a combination of Organic and PPC plans is desirable, and packages start as low as $500.00. However, even with more expensive packages, monthly payment plans are available which make SEO and Online Marketing affordable for a large variety of businesses.