Successful online business is impossible without an effective marketing strategy. 85% of online shoppers are guided by the results of the search engines. So as search engines dominate the market of targeted traffic, it makes sense to ensure your business website is optimised for the search engines, otherwise it will not get found.

If you don't want to give away your potential customers to your competitors you need to gain high search engine rankings for relevant keywords. So how do you rank your site high in the search engines?

There are two ways to get your site ranked high. Organic Search Engine Optimisation or Pay-Per-Click advertising.

Organic Search Engine Optimisation is the better option for long term search success. It is less expensive than the paid for advertising techniques and it brings out more sustainable results. It has been research that 80% of users click on the organic lists rather than the advertised paid links. The organic or natural lists are found under the sponsored ads in the search engines.

PPC or Pay Per Click Advertising is where you pay to have your website link in the "Sponsored link" or "Sponsored Ads" sections which appear above "natural" or "organic" results on the engine results pages (SERP's), this is very expensive for the competitive phrases and you have to keep paying to keep your site up there.

The benefits of an SEO Campaign shouldn't be underestimated. It does take time before the changes to take effect but SEO is still the best RIO than other methods. Online shoppers have more trust in the organic search results in comparison to the sponsored listings and will look through the first 2 or 3 pages. Ask yourself when you search for something how many times do you click the sponsored links? Plus once you site is optimised, it is optimized for life. You could spend a year optimizing your site and then stop your SEO campaign or at least half the amount of marketing. Depending on what your competitors are doing your site might still hover around the top pages for years to come. However search engines love websites that evolve and constantly get updated. A good plan would be to have a full blown SEO campaign for at least a year or two and spend as much as your marketing budget allows. Then if in a year or twos time you have streams of enquiries coming in and high listings in the search results you could drop your campaign cost in half. Obviously the more hours spent on SEO in the first few years the better. In the long term it will pay off and you will soon be reaping the benefits. If your business is serious about getting the benefits of traffic from search engines, you cannot do this with the help of an SEO Campaign.

SEO campaigns are a long term marketing strategy that soon starts to pay for itself. SEO consultants use a number of techniques to achieve their results. Techniques include keywords research and analysis, link building, design enhancements, article marketing, copywriting, blog and forum postings and setting up social/business networking sites. A good SEO consultant after time will become an expert in your business area and have an online authority in that subject.

Costs vary from company to company. The amount you have to pay for SEO campaigns usually depends on your business goals and the level of competition for your relevant keywords. Never pick an SEO company if they talk of guaranteeing you results. No one can guarantee results as nobody knows what competitors are doing. Some big companies pay SEO companies thousands of pounds each month and you never know if a large company might come on to the scene with a huge SEO marketing budget. Also check with any SEO company their portfolio of sites and check the search terms they tell you the sites come up for.