If we take a look at the market situation and advertising possibilities in Internet even 10 years ago there was not even a slightest resemblance of the situation that we can observe nowadays. At those times a proprietor (who wanted to provide services through Internet or deliver goods) had to design and configure his/her web-site and do what we call now “basic optimization" that comprises a considered choice of words, phrases, names of brands and so on. Nothing more – just follow the plan above and get ready to receive traffic and leads. But nothing is stable, especially World Wide Web where every second hundreds of web-sites appear. No wonder, they do not offer different services, they offer the same though in a bit different manner. All this gives birth to competition and rivalry between webmasters.



There are always way-outs from any kind of situation and “Internet-Boom" was not an exception: there are at least two steps of improving the situation with a rushing new web-sites:

1)Improve the quality of products you are selling and services you provide;

2)Try to “move" your web-site to the top positions in the major search engines.

These are just common, self-evident steps to attract future customers to your web-site. Still, the second step needs to be clarified. Today there is practically no need to explain what is Search Engine Optimization. There is a huge number of literature and an enormous number of seo-companies that “guarantee" your web-site to be among TOP5 or even the first one in search engines’ rankings for a definite number of keywords. At the same time this is nothing else than a simple “manipulation" from the view of search engines’ algorithms. Though it helps your web-site to occupy a leader position, who knows how long will it take and how long will this remain?

Together with the term Search Engine Optimization another has come into use: Search Engine Marketing. There is not sense to compare it with the previous service – this is a completely different level of promotion and the borders of it are wider in sense of advertising and marketing: web-site optimization, link-exchanges with relevant related partners (seen as recommendation of each other), copywriting, press-releases distribution, interactive marketing, articles circulation, direct marketing advertising using wireless channels and many other activities that become very popular and marketologists are hungry for the new ideas how to distribute more, find more, sell more and gain more from all of this.

Thus now wonder that at the moment there are thousands of interactive advertising agencies that are proud to call themselves “sem-guides" or in other words the creators of A to Z customized market strategy that will be applicable to any kind of business.

To summarize, Search Engine Marketing can not be a synonym to Search Engine Optimization. It includes much broader types of advertising, together with such popular types nowadays as, for instance, blogs and podcasts marketing, social marketing through web 2.0 social networks, email marketing, pay per click advertising and others. No one can be sure about any types of marketing nowadays but one thing is evident: there is nothing more powerful and workable than a full-scale Search Engine Marketing service at the moment.