• by Shankar Gupta , June 24, 2005

It's relatively easy to begin search engine marketing: You can create an account, write a text ad from scratch, tie it to a few keywords, and set bid prices in just a few minutes, using one of the major pay-per-click search engines out there.

But search engine marketing is hard to do well. Add a few more ads, tie them to a couple of dozen more keywords, start keeping track of each individual keyword's bid - and suddenly it's not so simple. If you're at a big company with a hefty ad budget, you can probably hire a search engine marketing firm and be done with it. But for companies that aren't willing or able to invest a significant amount of money toward outsourcing this task, know-how about constructing a search campaign can be tricky to come by.

There is, however, a wealth of information about search engine marketing on - where else - the Internet. For example, www.PayPerClickSearchEngines.com hosts articles and publishes newsletters on the topic, and also reviews individual search engines to help the clueless get a clue about marketing.

The Web site was created by Glennys Faulds, a New Zealander who works on a pair of other e-business Web sites.This one features reviews of 659 pay-per-click search engines, as well as a list of discussion forums and software tools to help new search engine marketers get better results for their campaigns.

One thing that may frustrate hopeful search engine marketers about the site, however, is that it focuses only on search engines that return no natural results - only sponsored links. The site doesn't deal much with advertising on Google, the current leader in pay-per-click search marketing. Nonetheless, the information provided applies to keyword buying on Google as well as Yahoo!Search Marketing, which follows a similar model when advertising to searchers on Yahoo!'s main page.