Last year witnessed a staggering 46 per cent rise in online advertising spend amongst UK firms, taking the total to $1.12 billion.

This rise easily outstripped increases relating to other forms of media, with total UK advertising spend perking up five per cent to $34.7 billion over the course of the year.

With increased budgets being earmarked for online spend, the marketing directors of growing firms are facing ever greater pressures to demonstrate a decent return on this investment. And the web optimisation services provided by a range of internet search specialists are a key part of the armoury.

‘We can drive targeted leads straight to your website and help secure prominent positions on the results pages of the most widely used search engines,’ explains Karen Salmon, marketing director of search services firm Overture’s Northern European division.

Pay-per-click services are vital to search engine optimisation. Through this model, advertisers bid to be associated with specific words and phrases and in exchange gain a prominent position when these words are entered into a search engine. The benefit for advertisers is that they only pay when an individual actually clicks through to their site.

Various other related tools are also available, for instance those that allow you to view the number of online searches being conducted on specific keywords.