First comes the wording. As a start, only terms that appear on the respective website are treated as candidates for keywords that can eventually be searched for. Next comes meta data, such as the meta tags of the page and the domain name of the site. Their contents provide additional inform­ation that can be treated as keywords. A domain name like ‘apple.com’ is like­ly to host information about Apple products, after all. Last but certainly not least comes external references. The more third party sites link to the respective site, the more people are effectively interested in the site’s contents, and thus yield a higher page rank than comparable insular competitors.

Everyone is using them. Daily, often hourly: search engines. Although the term ‘search engines’ is given in plural form, this text is mostly about Google Inc., the most important and best known service provider for search engine technology. However, Google does not only provide a well-fed search engine, but also various complementary services, such as news and mail portals, all of which contrib­ute to the ultimate goal of attracting and reaching people. Being a reseller, Google offers most of the information gathered about its users to third parties — for a price.

On the one hand, content providers must keep in mind how texts on websites should be written to satisfy the expectations of prospective readers. Writing as well as well-rounded web design are the key components of keeping a visitor attracted to a site, and are being dealt with in form the aspects accessibility and usability. Apart from formal aspects of composition, the central message of invoking interest in an audience is about trying to think the same way as the audience does. More often than not, website providers stick to their personal preferences and points of view instead of applying an open-minded, customer-orient­ated way of thinking. As a result, customers don’t stay on such websites for long, and associate the tedious appear­ance of the product presentation with the attributes of the actual products.

On the other hand, the general high aim of a website is to end up with a high page rank in Google, and must therefore follow certain rules with regard to its format and structure – and this is where the term ‘search engine optimization’ comes into play. Search engine optimization(SEO In Web), the technique to optimize a site’s page rank, does not come easily, however.

Affiliate marketing makes use of third party advertise­ment and distribution service providers. For a certain fee, affiliates offer their platforms to redirect traffic to their clients, claiming that the redirected parties be interested in a specific commodity or product range. Various pricing models allow for various ways of charging the client, such as per redirected visitor or per actual conclusion of a contract with the customer. A prerequisite for a smooth course of actions is a proper selection of procurance criteria. In case of the affiliate being a search engine service provider, such criteria are specified as keywords, whereas providers of specific news platforms who set up links and banners to redirect to the client, would be chosen according to their theme, sphere of influence, or reputation.