The Role of Search Engines & Search Engine Optimization

Search engine marketing appeared as the clear leader as a source of new customers, says the report, with retailers reporting that search engine marketing delivered 43 percent of overall customers to their sites. In 2004, 87 percent of retailers who participated in the study used pay-for-performance search placement (Google Adwords for example) and spent more than twice as much from their marketing budgets on this category than they did in 2003 ... Information from "The State of Retailing Online" Forrester Research June 2005

Start making the search engines work for you by embracing search engine optimization and search engine marketing ... discover the keys to highly successful internet marketing within your market niche (or for that matter any other market niche). Boost your profits from internet marketing quickly, and dramatically using the major search engines and local versions of them as well as country specific search engines like Ananzi and Aardvark in South Africa. If you are not sure what internet marketing or search engine optimization is then your internet efforts are being wasted in a big way and you need to get involved.

Take a moment to review these well researched facts and figure for the USA because whether we like it or not these changes will happen here in South Africa too. There is no doubt whatsoever that these major permanent marketing shifts are driven by search engine optimization and search engine marketing developments.

What is Internet Marketing ... And The Future Trends

 In the simplest of terms internet marketing is doing all that you have to do to ensure you are first and foremost found on the internet by prospective customers. Thereafter internet marketing is a matter of integrating all your internet efforts in such a way you achieve your most wanted response (MWR) from the maximum number of web site visitors. For most of us the MWR is to ultimately sell our products or other companies' products through our internet marketing efforts.

Talking of sales and quoting again from "The State of Retailing Online" Forrester Research June 2005 ... Several categories are expected to receive at least 10 percent of their sector's sales from the Internet this year (2005):

• Computer hardware and software (48 percent)

• Tickets (28 percent)

• Travel (26 percent)

• Books (20 percent)

• Consumer electronics (13 percent)

• Cosmetics and fragrances (12 percent)

• Toys and video games (12 percent)

• Flowers, cards, and gifts (10 percent)

Still not convinced?

Then just pray you're not involved in these market sectors below yet ... because you'll not be participating in unheard of market changes

• Online sales of cosmetics and fragrances are expected to grow 33 percent

• Over-the-counter medications and personal care sales will rise 32 percent

• Sales of jewelry and luxury goods to grow 31 percent

• Flowers, cards, and gifts up 30 percent

What Is Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization reduced down to simple terms is ensuring by design, written word, web page layout and other methods that your web site ranks more highly than others when search engine results (called SERPs) are displayed following a query to a search engine such as Google or Ananzi. At all times you will strive through search engine optimization to rank in number 1 spot on the first page of the search engine's results. Your success at search engine optimization is judged by the number of highly ranked search results and ultimately by the number of visitors seeing your web site.

Internet marketing and search engine optimization cannot really be separated because of the following ...

• The most important use of the internet today is not email ... it is search. People are using the internet to find what they want and they rely upon well optimized sites targeted to their search needs. Search engine optimization is not just about getting traffic. Search traffic alone is no good if it is not relevant to the searchers' needs. Search engine optimization should be as much geared towards satisfying searchers as satisfying search engines. Most of the spam techniques employed by some SEO (search engine optimization) experts seem to forget this important objective.

• The number of potential competitors for any web site is enormous and growing daily. Google search engine has an indexed data base of more than 8 billion web pages.

• If when a search is made using Google search engine for example your web site does not appear on page 1, page 2 or 3 at worst then only a tiny number of potential customers will know of your existence.

• Search is expected to grow dramatically and even replace traditional Yellow Pages for example when local search queries are made ... already happening in US and other leading countries

• To be successful at selling on the internet you must gets thousands of people visiting your internet sites. You can only effectively do this cost effectively using either search engine optimization or search engine marketing (PPC or pay per click) particularly given the prevalence of spam murdering email campaigns these days