More than 200 people gathered at Bend’s Tower Theatre on Thursday to listen to a Yahoo Inc. executive discuss the importance of search engine marketing, a practice that could give local companies more exposure nationally.

Nick Besbeas, vice president of global direct marketing with Yahoo, told the crowd that Yahoo has invested $50 million in search engine marketing, which involves designing a Web site that would appear higher on an online search engine’s list of results.

Event organizers said Besbeas’s message is especially important for businesses in Central Oregon, as local companies could use search engine marketing to achieve a higher online profile, and equal the consumer recognition level of bigger competitors based in larger cities.

”It depends on who your target audience is,” said Dan Hobin, president of Bend-based G5 Search Marketing, a moderator at the event. ”But with search engine marketing, a company in Bend could have the same presence as a company in San Francisco.”

Besbeas said companies should be aware how powerful an advertising tool a Web site can be with proper planning.

As search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN constantly change ranking criteria on their databases, Besbeas added it is important for businesses to continuously monitor their Web sites.

”This really is an arms race,” he said, noting that more Internet-savvy companies constantly update key words on their Web sites so that they would keep appearing when people use online search engines. ”It’s very important to keep up with that.”

Antonio Diaz, founder of search engines technology firm Optatio.com, also spoke at the event. Diaz is working with Yahoo on tracking the company’s Web site performance, and he highlighted how important it is for a site to use the right key words.

”There are 44 key words (in a report Optatio did for Yahoo searches) that accounted for 63 percent of the online search traffic,” Diaz said, noting words like ”employment” and ”resume” are among those listed. ”But those 44 words only account for 0.5 percent of the total number of key words out there. And if someone searches for a service your company offers and your company doesn’t show up, you’re losing a big part of your market.”

Shaylor Murray, project manager at Bend-based online marketing firm Limelight Department, attended the event, which was hosted by the Advertising Federation of Central Oregon.

Murray said local companies should take Diaz’s and Besbeas’s message to heart, since search engine marketing has a good chance of returning actual business.

”I feel that this is the most effective type of marketing out there,” Murray said, noting other advertising methods may be unsolicited by potential consumers. ”(Search engine marketing) presents itself when customers are looking for something.”

Yahoo, based in Sunnyvale, Calif., is one of the most prominent Internet service companies globally. The firm operates one of the largest online search engines on the Internet.