Search engine marketing is a kind of marketing that helps websites be seen by viewers. It is like the yellowpages but for the millions of websites floating around now a days on the internet. How it works is that a website will be created by an owner and then a search engine will be chosen. There are quite a few to choose from such as Yahoo, Google and Inbox, ones that charge per customer view and ones that are free. Keywords or tags will be entered for the website in the search engine so when a someone who is seeking a specific thing can type in a keyword and a list of websites with those keywords will be populated with a brief description of what is in that website. Website owners can choose to boost their websites to the top of the list by purchasing Pay Per Clicks which is why you always see the most popular sites at the beginning. The more money you pay for pay per clicks the more likely that your website will be seen over and over again.

For an example of how a search engine works say I am going on a trip to Las Vegas. I need to find a hotel but I need to some reviews also. In the search bar I would type ‘hotels las vegas reviews’. It would populate a list of popular hotel websites and websites that have reviews on these hotels or both in one website. All of this took about 30 seconds. Today time is money and most people want things as quick as possible which makes search engines a valuable resource.

Search engines can be detrimental to a businesses success since a good majority of people have access to the Internet and prefer using it for quick finds for vacations as well as other things. With a few keywords into a search engine a potential customer can have names of hotels, resteraunts, places and things to do, shows, pictures, show clips and other tourist points of interest at their fingertips in a matter of seconds with a list of reviews from previous customers. These 5-10 minutes of a person looking at their website can quickly result in a decision of the customer. If the website is very resourceful then you have the domino effect happen to where word of mouth will happen boosting the sales of that website.

So from one person typing in a few keywords can have a major impact on a websites future since people now a days would rather purchase or gather information from a website rather than another source such as the yellowpages or newspapers. They get it all online.