Search engines are some of the most popular and useful sites on the internet. Google, Yahoo, Bing, and other engines are utilized by millions of people each day as the search for websites, information, or products to purchase.

With so many people using search engines each day they represent an excellent opportunity for businesses and marketers to reach potential customers.

Having a site listed on a search engine such as Google can direct significant amounts of traffic to a web site and one of the fastest ways to get listed is through paid or sponsored search. Paid search are often the listings at the top or on the side of search engine results pages. These types of listings can be secured by paying money to the search engines, usually they are offered as CPC, or cost per click, placements. CPC means that advertiser pay the search engine if and when visitors click an ad and are directed to an advertisers site.

Cost per click search engine marketing has turned out to be an extremely effective marketing channel. As compared to other forms of advertising such as banner ads or offline mediums including television and radio search engine marketing has a better ROI, or return on investment. This means that for many companies money spent on search engine marketing translates into more sales or profit then the same amount of money spent on other marketing channels.