Special Report: Search Engine Marketing

- the number of links that point to your site;

- the quality (popularity) of the sites that link to your site;

- what other sites you link to; and

- the text in and around the links that point to your site.

Overture Services, which was acquired by Yahoo! in July 2003, is the leader in paid search services on the Internet, says Clay. Overture’s mission is to offer new and powerful methods of helping businesses reach consumers on the Internet. Overture auctions its rankings, so the more you pay per click on your results link, the higher your ranking. For each keyword phrase, advertisers bid against one another for placement within the search results. Below the paid listings, Overture gives additional results that are provided by Inktomi.