Search engine marketing has become an integral part of businesses marketing campaigns, so much so that the majority of companies are planning on increasing their budgets for both paid search and natural search.
This was one of the main findings of the UK Search Engine Marketing Report 2008 from E-consultancy and Neutralize. The survey of over 1000 businesses found that 63% are planning to increase the budget for paid search over the next 12 months and that 61% will be investing more in search engine optimisation (SEO) training, a way to bolster organic search, over the next year.
Spending on search engine marketing is already huge; 9% of companies surveyed claimed to spend more than £1m annually on paid search and a greater number (16%) is spending at least £50,000 on SEO per annum.
Google maintains its dominance in the search arena, last week reporting a 30% rise in quarterly profits. Meanwhile, the percentage of companies using Yahoo!’s paid search platform climbed slightly from 45% last year to 49%. The proportion of advertisers using Microsoft’s platform however has dropped slightly from 33% to 30%.
The research also found that 89% of search advertisers rate Google as the best search engine in terms of return on investment and the same percentage rate the search giant as the leader in terms of quality of traffic.
Lucy Cokes, managing director of search agency Neutralize, said that the popularity of search engine marketing is now reflected in marketing budgets in the UK. “It is fantastic to see a greater understanding of the benefits of a well-managed search marketing campaign and budgets being increased accordingly across both paid and organic search.”
© Crimson Business Ltd. 2008
