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?
About the author:
Andrew Seidel -
SEO Specialist and Search Engine Marketing
Consultant for Quantum Web Solutions in Sydney, Australia.
