Online marketing refers to the techniques available to a business to market, promote and advertise their products, services or brand on the World Wide Web. There are two main sub channels of online marketing that utilize different angles to help a business promote themselves online. Below is an outline of the online marketing channels that businesses may integrate into their marketing campaign.

Pay per click advertising (PPC)

Pay per click is a form of inbound marketing where by advertising is used to promote businesses via advertisements alongside organic search results. Each ad is triggered by a search for a particular keyword and the advertiser only pays when their ad is clicked and user visits their website - hence the name, pay per click.

Pay per click advertising is available with all the major search engines including Google, Yahoo and Bing as well as with smaller search engines and websites. If you would like more information on how pay per click advertising works visit What is pay per click adverting (PPC)?

Search engine optimisation (SEO)

Search engine optimisation aims to increase the visibility and traffic to your website by achieving higher rankings in search engine results. The process of search engine optimization refers to making improvements to your website, ensuring that it is attractive to the search engines - both in regards on-site content and coding as well as off-site web presence. The more search engine friendly your website is the more likely it is to appear higher in the organic search results for selected keyword phrases.

Search engines use complex algorithms to determine the order of the results they display for selected search phrases. These algorithms take into account hundreds of different factors, from the way the website is coded, to the relevance of the website content to the search term and how many inbound links there are to the website.

Online marketing is the general term used to describe SEO and PPC together as a single marketing strategy. Many companies will undergo both pay per click advertising for immediate results and search engine optimisation as a long term strategy - this can be considered a completed online marketing campaign.