Search engines are the first place for people on the Internet searching for goods or services, the position your website or blog appears in search results is an important factor. If your URL doesn't show up on the first or second page of results, chances of a consumer finding you decrease dramatically. Once you achieve a high search engine position, it is fundamental that you make sure you maintain the high ranking you have worked hard to achieve.

You must come up with a strategy to monitor and maintain your search engines positions. Your strategy is crucial to the success of any marketing campaign. Be aware that at first, after you have launched your search engine campaign and done all the right things to increase your rankings, you will most likely see a continual upward climb. You need to be on the lookout for is the second that upward climb in search engine rankings reaches a plateau. When this happens, your search engine position campaign moves into monitoring and protecting this position.

Analyzing the long-term trends of your search engines positions is imperative. The way in which search engines rank websites may change over time. If you are not monitoring your ranking and are unaware of these changes your position may drop. To prevent this kind of drop, you must create a system to monitor your positions on a daily/monthly basis. Create a graph to keep tabs on your top search engine ranking positions.

Each search engine uses a different formula to rank your website or blog. When a search engine changes this formula, it may raise or lower your ranking. This is why you must check your positions frequently in order to monitor when a search engine changes their formulas and what effect it has on your positions.

Word rank competition is a crucial factor you must always be aware of. Your competitor's position may rise, automatically lowering your rank. Or their position may drop, pushing your website or blog higher. Each month, expect position changes due to the continual changes that are occurring in your competitors position, and be prepared to modify your marketing strategy to compensate for decreased rankings. Monitoring these fluctuations give you vital information about how to improve your website to increase your position in search engine results.

Use the most popular search engines for your monitoring. Right now, there are five popular search engines that direct most of Internet traffic to your sites. The challenge you face is that these top five may change over time. Realistically Google followed by Yahoo are the two biggest. This means that your must not only monitor your search engine positions, but you must also keep track of the ranking popularity of the search engines you are monitoring. Find out which search engines people use most frequently every month and be sure to live in the present.

* Google: Shows searches at any Google-branded web site such as Google or Google Images.

* Yahoo: Shows searches at any Yahoo-branded web site such as Yahoo or Yahoo Local. Does NOT include searches at the Yahoo-owned sites of AltaVista, AllTheWeb and Overture.

* MSN: Shows searches at any MSN-branded web site such as MSN Search. It does not include Windows Live Search data (0.02 percent of search share in July 2006), but it will include that going forward from August 2006.

* AOL: Shows searches at any AOL-branded web site such as AOL Search. Does NOT include searches at AOL-owned Netscape Search (this is on the chart separately) or probably other AOL-owned sites.

* Ask: Shows searches at Ask but not other Ask/IAC-owned sites. For example, does NOT show searches at the sites of MyWay, iWon and My Search. These are included in the Other category.

* Other: Shows searches that occur at other search sites not named on the chart. Any site not listed on the chart can be assumed to have a share that is less than the smallest named site (IE, Ask is the lowest named search site with a 2.5% share. Other sites will have shares less than this).

Pay attention to your keywords. Keywords are the foundation of the search engine system, if you have found that a number of your positions have dropped, it may mean that a page of your website has become inaccessible to search engine spiders. Or the competition for that particular keyword or phrase has recently been the target of a search engine campaign. Your search engine marketing campaign is an investment. If costs you time and money on a continual basis you must also invest time and effort to protect your investment.