Search engines are still proving to be mythical monsters for many e-commerce website owners, and they don't have to be. Of course, any major search engine marketing campaign is best dealt with by those who know all the ins and outs, but there's no reason why you couldn't do the basics yourself. What follows is a brief introduction to search engines and the often confusing terminology used in that industry.

Search engines often seem to be the source of great mystery and confusion for businesses, but in reality they can be simpler than they first appear. Filled with jargon like Meta Tags, Pay-Per-Click and Optimisation, and constantly changing submission requirements, search engines and directories are becoming increasingly important to attract new visitors as their search results become more accurate.

Advances in search technology, and the inevitable need for income, has meant most search engine campaigns will require a certain amount of upfront costs. No longer is it as simple as adding a few keywords to your site and submitting it - nowadays specialist search engine consultants dedicate their time (for a fee, of course) to getting your site a prominent listing on popular search engines.

Some of the options and main aspects of the popular UK search engines follow below. This is not meant as a comprehensive guide, but should give you a good introduction to modern search engines. For more detailed information, sites such as http://www.searchengineblog.com and http://www.seochat.com should provide endless hours of reading!

Search engine submissions can be split into two areas: free submissions and paid/pay-per-click submissions. Search engines offering free submissions include Altavista, Lycos, Google, AllTheWeb and Dmoz (a popular directory). Paid submissions include Yahoo who charge £199 to business sites for an Express submission, as well as the above search engines which also have a paid option for express submissions. Please note that although most sites are accepted immediately by free search engines, a new listing can take anything from 2 weeks to 3 months (or longer) to appear. If you require a faster entry to search engine marketing, you should consider a Pay-Per-Click (PPC) service.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) is a term used to describe the Sponsored Results that appear at the top of most search engines these days. Sponsors bid for specific keywords and if that keyword is searched for, the Sponsor's ad appears at the top of the search results. For an example, go to http://www.aol.co.uk and type in "business" in the search bar. The first 3 or 4 results are all PPC. The minimum bid is usually 10p per click and the minimum deposit is anything from £5 - £100. Most popular search engines now accept Pay-Per-Click listings which is a great way of improving your position in search engine results. The main providers of PPC are Google ( http://www.google.co.uk ), Overture ( http://www.uk.overture.com ) and Espotting ( http://www.espotting.com ).

Most PPC search engines require a deposit upfront. Google ad campaigns require a valid credit card and a £5 credit card deposit which is not included in the fees above. Overture ad campaigns require a valid credit card and a £60 +VAT credit card deposit, plus they now also require a minimum spend of £25 per month. PPC campaigns can be expensive if not setup or managed correctly, and you are advised to study them and the sites above thoroughly before attempting a PPC campaign yourself.

You've probably also heard of Search Engine Optimisation, or someone has tried to sell it to you! Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is used to maximise your site's chances of a good position in search engine listings. This is done by improving various aspects of the site such as the Title tag and the main content of the site. Most SEO is aimed at Google which is fast proving to be the most effective search engine, both for optimisation and for accurate search results, but increasingly optimisation is being provided for other search engines as well.

Over the last few months we've seen a lot of change in the search engine industry, with companies like Yahoo! snapping up technology and competitors in the ever-increasing race to be the people's favourite search engine. Google still seems to hold that envious position, but with MSN's recent release of their new search engine (and more promised) and Yahoo!'s acquisition of Inktomi, Overture and now Kelkoo, it seems the race to be a search engine first and a portal later is back on again. But what does this mean for you? Well, as a consumer it should mean better search results, though that depends largely on how much advertising is included in the results. As a business, it's probably going to mean higher prices if you current use any of the search engine advertising like Pay Per Click. With less competition, and more website owners trying to get a decent showing on the search engines, Pay Per Click is likely to become even more popular - and popularity means higher bids.

Two leaders in the PPC field have emerged - Google's AdWords, and Overture (who supply most of the major search engines with sponsored results). Espotting has pretty much lost much of their impetus after Yahoo bought Overture and dumped Espotting, and then they were dumped by Ask Jeeves as well, but they're still quite effective at supplying results to the many shopping directories out there.

Should you be doing anything right now? Well, if you use PPC then you should keep a close eye on who's supplying who so that you can benefit from these new changes. Look at your budgets and keywords again, and make sure you're using Overture if you want to get a good spread across search engines. We'll keep you informed via this newsletter of any further developments, but if you haven't assessed your search engine strategy recently, now would be a good time!

And that's a quick introduction to search engines! There is a lot more to search engines than what we have covered above, but you should at least be able to follow what your website designer is saying now, and question them if they don't even mention designing your online shop with search engines in mind!