The U.K. search engine marketing statistics state that the predicted growth in search engine marketing spends this year shall rise by 58% this year to £2.22bn as compared with the figures in 2006. Similarly the U.S. search market is also estimated to rise steadily in all SEM services in a couple of years from now. The paid search is estimated to rise to 33.0 ($ Billions) in the year 2010, whereas, search marketing shall rise to 11.1 as given in a consolidated report compiled by econsultancy.

Considering the fact that the concept of search engine marketing in India is comparatively newer than to the UK and US the growth percentage in search engine marketing spends here is believed to be much higher. More and more Indian businesses are now realizing the potential of SEM and are gradually diverting to that front. But before they actually plunge into the market there are a few understandings that thee businesses must have about search engine marketing. Listed below are a few points that will make the concept of marketing your business through search engines easier.

Most of the internet users use the search engines to look for information or products. When they search for a particular info, product or service on the search engines that type in the required keywords. It is then that the most relevant of your website pages appears in the search results. Note, that the search engines do not rank the whole website, but only a few page of the website which they find relevant. The higher your webpage ranks in the SERP (search engine result pages) the greater are the chances of people clicking on your website and going through your webpage.

The two major services of search engine marketing are search engine optimization (SEO) and paid search. Search engine optimization is optimizing each page of the website with the aim of making them appear in the SERPs. This is also known as "on" page optimization. There are a few "off" optimizations too that are part of SEO services. They too help in the ranking of the web pages.

On the other hand is the paid search which is an alternative to reach the top position of SERPs without much effort. Businesses need to bid for keywords in order to book the top position for themselves. Once they reach the top, every time a user clicks on their link they need to pay the bid amount to the Search engines. There are many business owners who make use of both the search engine marketing services and enjoy its benefits.

The most essential aspect of search engine marketing is keywords, which stand as an integral requirement for both the services, it is therefore suggested that the keywords be selected with utmost care and research in order to reach out to the targeted audience efficiently.