The Importance of Search Marketing

In the past years the Internet has become increasingly popular and is now an essential part of our daily life. With its popularity steadily increasing companies realised this new and untouched opportunity to win new clients and started moving their business online.

About three years ago a new industry sector evolved as a result of the growing web: Search Engine Marketing.

Search gurus nowadays spread the message that search has already overtaken print and radio advertising and television advertising is apparently steadily losing its importance. According to them most marketing budgets will be spend online.

Sure, the return on investment (ROI) in search marketing is amazing and the costs per new costumer are lower as with 'classical' advertising, direct marketing or yellow pages. However, search engine marketing alone won’t be as efficient. Integrated in a healthy marketing mix, conventional marketing can add a huge boost to search marketing and other marketing channels, and hence push you company’s success.

Now, let us take a closer look at search engine marketing. There are two main sections: ‘organic’ and paid marketing. ‘Organic’, or 'Natural' refers to the results down the left hand side/center of the search engine's result pages. You can’t influence the ranking directly, but optimising your website can push your position higher.

The results you are able to influence are the ones to the top or down the right hand side of the result pages in most search engines, such as Google, stated often as ‘sponsored links’. These are referred to as pay-per-click (PPC) adverts. Every single click the advert receives will require the advertiser to pay. The more you are willing to pay per Click the higher the ad will appear if a particular keyword is entered. As you can imagine the prices for the top keywords, such as ‘car insurance’, are enormous.

Finally, a good mix of paid and ‘organic’ online marketing in combination with conventional advertising is the best solution to push your business efficiently.