Produced by the IDM

Eight out of ten users now rely on search engines to find the information they need, according to research carried out by Yahoo! Search Marketing. What other marketing discipline provides an opportunity to promote your products at the precise moment somebody actively searches for something you sell?

Paid search now constitutes the greatest proportion of online marketing spend in the UK – partly because it can deliver quick results. But with up to 85% of search engine visitors coming through natural search listings, today the most successful businesses realise that the best way to maximise their Return on Investment is to integrate their approach to natural and paid search marketing. In order to be able to grow targeted traffic to their web sites in a more cost-effective and sustainable way for the long-term, a strategic approach that incorporates Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is also required.

Today, the greatest successes that are achieved through Paid Search focus on quality and relevancy – rather than simply increasing Pay per Click budgets. PPC services such as Google AdWords, Microsoft adCenter and Yahoo! Search Marketing (Panama), all reward quality campaigns with lower costs – helping to maximise ROI. Therefore by making ads much more targeted and relevant, clickthrough rates (one of several measures the search engines use to determine quality) can be improved. Not only does this approach deliver lower costs but typically conversions also increase due to increase relevancy.

In addition, the PPC services now look more closely at landing pages of reached through PPC ads as well. They will consider campaigns to be of higher quality if landing page content is seen to more closely relevant to the keywords and creative used in the PPC ads.

Quality web site content has always been an important factor in improving rankings through natural search listings. Consequently, the requirements for effective PPC and SEO campaigns are becoming much more closely linked and this importance is likely to increase even more. High rankings in natural listings still require relevant page titles and headings that are unique for every page within a web site. Page body content that is fresh and up-to-date is also important. As with efficient PPC campaigns, segmentation is the key and pages that focus more tightly around only one or two target keyword phrases will achieve higher rankings over the long-term

So, nowadays relying solely on either PPC or SEO will not always deliver the greatest returns for businesses competing for quality traffic to their web sites. An approach that considers all potential opportunities for Search Engine Marketing will deliver the greatest ROI - a holistic approach is becoming even more essential. And the benefits that can be achieved through Search Marketing will continue to exceed any other form of marketing for many businesses – either online or offline.