Search engine marketing has in recent times gone through a paradigm shift. To the seasoned marketer, the handwriting is all over the wall. To the uninitiated search engine marketer, the shift needs a little pointing out.

But what is search engine marketing? It is simply an Internet marketing method that depends mostly on natural search engine traffic to drive sales. In order to be able to benefit from this traffic, the marketer's website has to be included in the search engine database and be listed or ranked favorably among the first 10 sites on the search page.

Driving the desired amount of traffic to your sites requires use of tools and techniques. Several years ago, it was easy for sites to be listed and ranked well for their chosen keywords. Web masters did not have to do a lot to stunts to attract the desired traffic to their web pages. Today, the story is different. Due to the sheer volume of web pages that come on the Internet each day, it has become increasingly difficult to get included in the search engine database, sometime taking weeks and even months to get indexed as it is called.

It is the sheer volume of websites coming on line on a daily basis and the Search Engines' penchant for erratic changes that has fueled the paradigm shift in search engine marketing. Whereas it was possible and even easy for websites to be listed and ranked well in years past for their desired keywords, today's search engine marketers are required to do a lot more, including on-page and off-page search engine optimizations in order to get any good results.

And because of the volume of web pages online today, it would be insane for any search engine marketing practitioner to do any meaningful optimization without search engine marketing tools. To make matters worse, there is a plethora of tools out there all claiming to be the best in search engine optimization. The good news though is that there are actually a few good search engine marketing tools out there and the seasoned search engine marketers know it.