Many small business owners confuse search engine marketing with search engine optimization.
Search engine marketing is essentially a fee-based system. Within search engines, pay-per-click (PPC) services have become very useful in targeting your marketing dollars to a specific audience. With PPC, The more you are willing to pay, the closer you are to the top of the list, and the more people are likely to click on your site. However, you must pay a fee for every single visitor that clicks on your ad.
While a PPC solution is effective in the short term, it can get expensive very quickly. Search engine optimization, however, enables site owners to increase search engine rankings within the major search engines without having to pay for every visitor (whether they buy something or leave your site immediately).
The difference between SEO and SEM can be huge. Think about how many searches are done on a daily basis, and think about the potential to increase your percentage of visits from these searches by 10%, 50%, 100% or more! Just using a few search engine optimization techniques could result in a huge number of new people seeing your site every month.