The article went on to interview a number of businesses, most reporting great successes in both paid Google advertising as well as free top rankings acquired through the process of search engine optimization. Another interesting quote from the article:

"We get 3,000 hits monthly from Google without spending a dime," said ExperiencePlus Tours founder Rick Price. Price goes on to explain how he once spent $100,000 a year on catalogs, postage, and classifieds. According to USA Today, he now spends much of his marketing time updating his site to achieve a top ranking in Google. "We bust our butts to make Google like us," Price says.

How do these people do it? They fine-tune their Web pages to be Google-friendly. However, you must know what the search engine is looking for before you can give it what it wants. Once you do that, your page should jump to the top of the search results, and depending upon the keyword, it can attract thousands of visitors a month.

Of course, the search engines can change the way they rank pages. That means you can sometimes drop in rank as the article warns. Consequently, this requires you to monitor your rankings and to adjust your page when needed.

As many MarketPosition readers know, WebPosition was the first software product in 1997 to assist businesses in tracking their search engine rankings and to help improve those rankings. There's no more proven and more established technology for creating search engine friendly pages.

Search engine marketing is a process and it does take some work. However, as the USA Today article notes, it can be an investment with a significant pay-off and a relatively low cost to entry. That's why this category has been growing in both acceptance and popularity.

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