SEO is the abbreviation for Search Engine Optimisation. It is the process of improving the volume and traffic to a website nice natural search results. Natural search engine results are those below the sponsored ads that Google highlights at the top of any search result and to the right. Sometimes there will be no sponsored ads at the top so the first result will be a natural listing. SEO involves copywriting, Meta tag improvement and link building. For a website to come up in the natural listings your site needs to be optimised well. If your site is already optimises you probably need an ongoing campaign to boost its position in the search engines. Some companies employ SEO specialists on a full time basis to run SEO campaigns. If your competitors are having SEO work done on their site on a regular basis as part of their online marketing costs, you will have to do the same and if possible more.

PPC or Pay Per Click advertising is where you pay to have you website listed in the "sponsored link" or "sponsored ads" section which is just above the ‘natural' or “organic” results on the engine results pages. They can also be found on the content of a webpage. What the text link says is up to you but you need to make sure the wording is enticing enough for searchers to click on the ad. Once they co click on the ad, you will pay for that click. The prices vary regarding how competitive the area is. Some could be as little as 1 penny, some as must as £5. With PPC you need to ensure the page the link takes you too is really optimised for the keywords you used to get your PPC ad viewed. If someone clicks on your ad, goes to your site, finds a page that is not relevant and not what they are looking for they will navigate straight away but you will still have to pay for that click. PPC sometimes can work well in the early days of a website in conjunction with SEO work on the site.

Paid Inclusions is where you pay a search engine company to include your site in their index. Most search engines offer this service except for Google. Some offer a similar package to PPC (see above).

Cost per Impression advertising is where the advertiser pays for their advert to be shown a fixed number of times over a range of web pages. The advertising agency takes a commission. This type of advertising is cheaper but not as reliable.

Affiliate Marketing is the final type of online marketing I am going to talk about. It is a web-based marketing practice where one business rewards one or more affiliates' for each visitor or customer brought about the affiliates marketing efforts. Basically this means that one site drives traffic to another site. So you have a website, you put an ad on it with a link to another website. If someone comes to your site and then clicks on the ad and goes off to the other site, the owner of that other site will pay you for that click.