Most new website owners undoubtedly view online marketing as a novice business challenge. However, the essential link between business and marketing is the same whether it is on or off-line. As is stark clear in the “real” physical world, unless your online business bears an intelligent, well thought out strategy of marketing, success will always be beyond your grasp regardless of industry.

Not so long ago, even as the internet’s popularity and place in society grew in leaps and bounds, advertising by way of TV and radio was still considered to be the most relevant and effective way to advertise. It was widely believed that if you were serious about being a business person you had to be willing to invest in television and radio advertising. Nevertheless, willingness is usually determined by position and with regard to television and radio advertising, you had to be in a position to be able to pay the hefty advert fees. Fellows who couldn’t afford TV adverts resorted to cheaper forms of advertising, like print, for example. The internet has however established itself as a staple part of most people’s lives and by vigorous tweaking of the elements, SEO marketing has become the most powerful yet least expensive means of business promotion.

From the absolute beginning, SEO marketing was a thing that was essentially free. SEO gave birth to the theory that exposure wasn’t purchasable; earning it was the only route to getting to it. Through the process of optimizing the online presence of a website it became possible to appear on the landing pages of Google, or Bing or even Yahoo, thus attracting multitudes of visitors every day. However, since SEO was free, many of the available search engines came up with their own alternative – Pay Per Click, or PPC. With PPC, the website owner was liable to paying for each click made by each person visiting the site. The thing with PPC though is that paying for each click is compulsory, even when a sale doesn’t materialize, effectively making it potentially very expensive. The challenge of getting online visibility organically without having to fork out money as in the case of PPC kind of left most website owners in a dilemma. With this came the fellows that tried to trick the system, hammering out as many fancy shortcuts as they could. There was considerable success but there was a catch to it – the success was always temporary. Further, when the search engines discovered the trickery, the penalty exacted was perpetual.

The history seems a little grim but that’s because it is intertwined with Pay Per Click. On its own, organic SEO lacks the grim elements, even in its history. The fact that for this approach to marketing you mostly earn your presence and clout in the internet rather than purchase it injects a kind of honor that’s rare in today’s world. Come to think of it, its tenets sort of echo traditionally cherished values, where your sweat and grit are responsible for how soundly your empire is built.