Business recognises the importance of SEO like never before.
The growth in the search engine marketing field has been
incredible, far exceeding most other industries. In the past
achieving listings in search engines has been very much taken
for granted by many businesses, being treated as less important
as the standard marketing methods such as newspaper, television
and radio advertising. With more internet consumers utilising
search as their first options for finding a business of choice,
search engine marketing has come to the forefront of marketing.
A few main advantages of search engine marketing over other
marketing methods are:
1. The cost by comparison is quite low to perform search
engine marketing over other forms of marketing.
2. Internet users are often much more qualified by the time
they find your site as they have been searching for your
specific service or product.
3. Your advertising is running seven days a week, twenty
four hours a day. To attain this kind of exposure through
any other form of marketing would blow any businesses marketing
budget out the window.
The fact that SEO is a much cheaper form of advertising
(and an extremely effective one) has not gone unnoticed for
many savvy businesses. Realisation that cost of acquisition
is markedly cheaper means that many companies are directing
increased resources from their marketing budgets towards
search engine marketing campaigns.
In the search engine marketing game, Google is clearly the
leader. Estimates vary as to how much of the market Google
actually has, but most estimates are around 75%. This being
the case; while it is important to focus on Google, Yahoo
and MSN when optimising your site, the majority of focus
should be spent on Google.
If you don't have a proper SEM strategy in place, or part
of your marketing budget set aside for search engine marketing,
I suggest that you seriously rethink your marketing strategy
and look at the benefits that your company or business can
achieve through having a strong presence in the search engines.
You can be fairly certain that your competitors are either
utilising search engine marketing, or seriously considering
it.
Do you really want them having a competitive advantage over
you with your business being left behind?
Andrew Seidel -
SEO
Specialist and Search Engine Marketing Consultant in Sydney,
Australia.
