SEO In The News
Search engine optimisation is all over the business news at the moment; as budgets have been reduced for traditional marketing, much has been made of the shift into long term online investment. Don't just take our word for it; greything has summarised recent stories below with links to the original source in case you feel like a bit of further reading.
Search Engine Blind Test
This is a great little app to test how you site is viewed by 3 top search engines, Google, Microsoft's Bing & Yahoo. Click here and enter your main keywords) and it will show the top results from each search engine. It wasn't built for this purpose and only shows one page of results so you may need to enter a few keywords but it's interesting to see.
SEO and PPC spend to double
A recent report from Forrester predicts companies will double their spend on both SEO and PPC over the next five years. In the US alone, the industry will be worth $55 billion by 2014; a figure that will make digital marketing represent 21% of all marketing spend. In the UK, online spend is already 20% with further growth expected as traditional marketing routes decline. (Source: forrester.com)
Increased SEO Budgets
The UK Search Engine Marketing Benchmark Report 2009 found that 55% of companies plan to increase SEO budgets this year, and 45% plan to increase spending on pay per click, as they try to increase ROI in today's tough economic climate. (Source: econsultancy.com)
The same study also found that around half of the companies surveyed reported better results on organic optimisation campaigns during 2008, with just 6% reporting a decrease in effectiveness.
Social Media Networks
There is a strong increase in the number of companies using social media with the biggest increase coming in the use of Twitter. A year ago only 3% of companies said they used the micro-blogging service for their marketing campaigns while this year almost half said they were using it. (Source: komarketingassociates.com)
Facebook has just started the option of a 'vanity name' on your facebook account, e.g. www.facebook.co.uk/yourcompany - this is certainly a big SEO improvement and could help your business get an important additional entry on a search engine results page.
Demand For SEO
Google Trends has shown that the demand for SEO has tripled in recent years, including the topic being a frequent search in Google News, again with a steady climb in searches. (Source: Google Trends)
Long Term Help
When employed properly search engine optimisation helps you to establish a long term position in a desired spot in the search engine results. This is quite unlike PPC where you have to incur ongoing costs and the results are unpredictable. (Source: promotionworld.com)
When the right SEO strategies are employed, internet users seeking your products and services will find it easier to find your site. One of the biggest benefits of this service is that this promotion never sleeps. Search engine rankings increase and so does visibility to your targeted audience. In the long run your brand will develop a high profile and that too at a relatively low cost
Free Help
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