If your goal is to make money online, then it is important that you understand what role the search engines play in attracting targeted traffic to your website. Targeted traffic essentially equates to the potential customers frequenting your website who are most likely to be interested in your product or service. When someone types a query in the search engines, they are almost instantly presented with websites, videos, and Tweets which are most relevant to their search. As the user searches through the pages from the first result forward, the websites, for the most part, become less and less relevant.

One thing that you should be crystal clear on is how drastically the positioning of your website affects how much traffic it receives. This was clearly demonstrated by a study which was conducted at Cornell University back in 2006. Essentially, the study concluded that the website which occupies the number one position in the search engine receives just over fifty-five percent of the traffic for the search query. The drop of to the number two position is drastic as this website receives just under thirteen and a half percent of the traffic, while the number three positioned website receives just under ten percent of the traffic for a given term. All in all, the top ten results receive approximately ninety-two percent of the search engine traffic for a given term.

In addition, most internet users only use what are considered the top three search engines. Furthermore, usage varies by country. For example, Google, Bing, and Yahoo are the three most popular search engines in the world. However, Google receives substantially more traffic than the other two search engines. This is especially true in the United States where Google holds an even larger advantage.

Knowing what you now know, what can you do as an internet marketer to make money online with the search engines? Well, the number one factor are the key phrases for which your website ranks. The relevance of the traffic which these keyword or key phrases steer to your website will determine your conversion rate. While internet marketers often hold the notion that they should attempt to rank for the keywords which receive the most traffic, this is not necessarily true. The truth is that it has been proven that longer, more descriptive key phrases generally result in a higher conversion rate.

So why is all of this relevant? Well, it is relevant because with online business, the key is for our website to be found by potentially paying customers. Studies how shown that in excess of 90% of individuals who go on a quest to find a website to make a purchase do so via the search engines, and less than 10% will do so by some other method.

Where do you go from here as an internet marketer if you wish to rank in the search engines for your targeted keywords? This is a fairly robust topic which lands within the discipline of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). SEO is by itself a whole other topic which must be discussed within its own article. Nonetheless, what I can convey to you is that the search engines determine if a website is relevant for a key term by analyzing the content of the web pages. Additionally, the search engines also determine the popularity of the website by determining how many other websites within the same subject market link to that website. This is what is referred to as "link popularity". While SEO is fairly involved, it is not something that you cannot master. While some opt to hire a so-called SEO expert, my strong advice to you is that you educate yourself on the subject of SEO, and do it yourself. Once you have mastered this technique, your website will rank prominently in the search engines, thus enabling you to consistently make money online.