Have you ever wondered how ‘sponsored links' appear on website pages when you look for certain products or services using a search engine?  We did. So we spoke to Bill Wittur, owner of Bottree Digital Services (www.bottree.com), about searching and how it can be used by any business or organization to generate traffic for your website.

Wittur starts by describing some of the industry jargon you'll run into. For example, "it's important to differentiate between organic versus paid results," says Wittur. Organic describes the normal results you get when using search engines. You type in a keyword and the results you see are based on the order of keyword relevancy, determined by the search engine.

Paid results are links that appear with the search results. For instance, if you're searching a topic using Google, the paid-for results - that also match your keywords - appear on the right-hand side of your page under the heading 'sponsored links'.

"Because it's difficult for companies to fine-tune their website to maximize the volume of traffic from organic results, an increasing number of businesses and organizations are turning to paid search as a viable method of generating new traffic to their website," says Wittur.

So, how do you set up a paid search (also referred to as a "campaign")?

"The first thing you have to do is choose a search engine that you'll use to advertise your site and services," says Wittur. He suggests Google "because it dominates the market and is easier to use than other search engines."

Paid campaigns are set up using AdWords (www.adwords.google.com), an online tool that walks you through the process of creating your campaign. AdWords helps you find target keywords (also referred to as "contextual targeting") that match with your products and services and rank high in search engine searches.

You will also need to decide on bidding options - the amount you're willing to pay each time your AdWords ad is clicked (also called cost-per-click pricing). Then you create your ad, using keywords that you want to bid on.

The goal is to closely match your keywords with the products and/or services that someone using the search engine is looking for.

Wittur cautions, "The most important thing is to avoid overbidding for terms. They'll eat up your budget very quickly and the cost may reduce the benefit of using paid search."