search engine optimisation

Peter Maycock

search engine marketing

A Brief History of Search Engine Marketing

Looking at the latest Internet statistics, the number of active "surfers", the number of new websites and the ever increasing number of ecommerce sites, it is obvious that an online business needs to address the issue of search engine marketing.

It is estimated that somewhere between 65 and 85% of people going onto the web go straight to a search engine. Therefore, any sensible company that is serious about marketing its wares over the web must have a presence on these engines.

Before the advent of pay per click the best way of getting known on the web was either through traditional advertising channels or through search engine optimisation. The latter, being a completely new industry, was shunned by most companies as a "black art" that could do as much harm as good. However, those that took the plunge and had their sites optimised were soon reaping the rewards of their efforts. And surprisingly it was often the smaller companies that gained the lion's share of this new emerging market.

The older and more famous brand names tended to rely on traditional marketing methods such as television and magazines to drive visitors to their sites, spending vast amounts of money in the process. These companies then dabbled in banner advertising, typically a two or three pane rotating graphic advert usually placed at the top of a web page. It is only recently that the larger companies have taken on board the idea that search engine optimisation actually works!

In 1998 a company called goto.com developed an idea that would change the face of search engine marketing forever - this was the pay per click concept. By reserving the top few slots on a search engine results page or by text adverts down the side of a page, the search engines could gain revenue by allowing advertisers to feature their websites based on the words typed into the search box. Typically the advertiser would place funds in an account with goto and bid a set amount on their preferred keywords and whenever a person clicked on an ad, that amount of money was deducted from an advertiser's balance. This new idea soon became very popular with other companies following their lead and setting up ppc deals with the major search destinations.

The combination of these two powerful approaches, search engine optimisation and pay per click advertising, is the foundation of search engine marketing.