Google remains the heart of the Internet wielding massive control through its flagship product the search engine. Extending far beyond its own web pages through a comprehensive set of advertising programs, Google is nearly everywhere. The host of services provided by the Internet behemoth include email, online mapping, social networking, and video sharing. Alexa's traffic rankings have Google placed second in terms of overall traffic, losing out only to Yahoo! But if you're considering only search engine usage, Google controls a whopping 62% of the Internet search engine market.

This powerful entity in the online world has far reaching effects as businesses change their approach to marketing. The number of companies turning to the Internet for e-commerce has been explosive over the last decade. At the crux of this boom is Google, powering and networking businesses everywhere. But with such a large number of companies the fight for exposure grows tougher each day. Thus enters search engine optimisation or SEO as it is more popularly known. SEO is a marketing strategy of organically increasing a website's search engine results' page placement. Since a higher rank translates automatically to higher traffic, the potential for exposure via SEO is extremely significant.

Google uses the Page Rank, an algorithm created by and named after one of the company's co-founders, Larry Page. The patented process uses a number of closely guarded parameters, and some well known ones. An important part of the SEO process is determining the ways in which Google assigns priorities to websites for rankings. Search engine marketing follows a rigorous process of keyword selections, link exchanges, along with a few other web optimisation techniques. An experienced SEO firm keeps careful track of Google's search results, following the most minuscule changes to the algorithm and the results.

The huge popularity that Google commands is fuelling the online advertising world. Unfortunately, many an SEO firm has been tempted to try out more unsavoury tactics. These frowned upon strategies, popularly called black hat SEO, are nothing more than a quick way of getting to the top and getting blacklisted, or worse yet, banned. Nothing spells marketing doom quite like a Google ban, and so you're online venture is in serious jeopardy if you cannot trust your SEO company. Choose a search engine marketing service that focuses on approved, white hat practices to build brand value and generate the traffic you need to power your enterprise.