In an attempt to get web sites up and running as quickly as possible, many designers create pages using tools that allow rapid application development. But many neglect to edit code with search engine rankings in mind. This, and the fact that search engines that simply analyse the content of sites are being usurped by those such as Google, which rank search results based on the number of sites that link to each page, mean that some firms find that their sites have a disappointingly low profile.

Companies looking for better ways to present themselves and their services online might benefit from pay-per-click or paid-for-presence advertising, an option increasingly being offered by both web performance and search-engine-optimisation companies. This can improve firms' rankings in sponsored search results across the major search engines.

The top three UK firms in this sector are Google, Espotting and Overture, but Overture is credited with leading the way, because it has offered paid-for-presence advertising in the UK since 2000. Martin Childs, Overture's managing director for northern Europe, says that his firm's original aim was to make search results as relevant as possible, but it now specialises in selling rankings.

One option is for firms to bid for specific terms and keywords. Their bids are compared against others and ranked. The highest bid will be ranked at the top of the list for search results, while the others follow in order of how much they bid. Search returns for the word or phrase are then shown in this order.

Every time a user clicks on a sponsored link the company pays the amount of its bid to the service provider. The amount a company bids for a keyword will depend on how much business the company believes each click-through will generate.

To make sure that the linked sites will be relevant to search users, Overture's editorial team checks sites before they are ranked - so the term "mortgage" could not be used to link to a pornography site, for example. "We have a large book of editorial guidelines and apply these to each term - we have to try to interpret what it is that the user wants," says Childs.

Although companies can bid for whatever keywords they choose, certain terms will cost a premium at certain times, while others may have no bids on at all, according to Childs. "'Serviced offices' went up to about £20, and that represents the value that that lead represented to an advertiser. When you are paying that amount you have to make it work for you." For companies concerned about the expense Childs says, "[Such] high bids are the exception, not the rule." In fact Overture has taken bids on just 200,000 terms, and according to Childs, only makes money on the top 10,000.

Companies' trademarks are protected to an extent, because Overture will not allow firms' rivals to bid for them, and brand-name registration is tightly controlled, according to Childs. "We allow affiliates to bid on certain keywords, but you would not want a manufacturer bidding on its competitors' names, for example," he adds.

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