The majority of today’s private and business world involves the internet. It’s the most effective and efficient method of distributing your message to the rest of the world. Whether it’s for their main business, a smaller side business or just a blog site that is about you and your personal experiences and/or opinions – they’re with us every minute of the day.

In fact, you don’t even need a website to be a part of what occurs daily via the internet. You can create your own account on practically every website as well by doing things such as signing up with an online retailer for regular newsletters or joining an online trade and exchange service. You can even create your own page on someone else’s website like Facebook or Twitter or create your own blog. If you Google your own name you will be surprised just how famous you actually are.

However it’s not just people that need to be found. Businesses are the ones that rely on the internet to make money. Practically every business has a website that sells products or services and while many of them have amazing things to show and offer, the bulk of them aren’t actually easy to find online.

This is where Search Engine Marketing (SEM) comes into play. In order for your business to justify its existence and for your business to be financially successful, it will need to feature towards the top of the Google search rankings for the keyword phrases that relate to the company’s products or services.

Many businesses run their operations daily and rely on their website for productivity, enquiries and sales. But just as many businesses aren’t actually aware that there are many competitors online trying to achieve the same goals. Search Engine Marketing can make the difference between an average business and a highly successful and profitable business.

There are a number of ways in which to achieve the online exposure required to better your competitors. For new websites a Google Adwords account should be considered as part of the strategy. This form of Search Engine Marketing can allow your website to feature at the top of the SERPs in Google’s sponsored sites section. It takes several weeks or often months for a new website to be recognised and indexed by Google. Sitting up pretty in the paid for sponsored sites is a great step to help your website get traffic straight away.

Search Engine Optimisation is an integral part of every website and perhaps the best means to achieving high "organic" Google rankings. This means ranking naturally without the assistance of paying for a place in the sponsored section. When optimised to a high standard, your website should start to rank "organically".

In order to optimise a website properly, keyword phrases need to be identified which relate to the products or services offered on your website and which are receiving searches. These keyword phrases will be assigned to relevant pages in order to achieve greater online presence. Once the site optimisation has been completed then a link building strategy should be put in place as this is the most important ongoing part of SEO. By having several quality, content-related anchor text links coming into your site, this will assist with your site ranking in higher positions for those keywords.

Optimising a website is a huge part of Search Engine Marketing and goes a long way to ensuring that a website is found on Google. At the end of the day, there’s no point having a website unless people can find you.