INMA_A01.QXD

Remember though, that search engine marketing is only one online digital communi-
cations tool. For established brands, we commonly see from web analytics that more
than half of site visitors arrive at a site, not through search engines, but directly through
typing in the web address or following a bookmark (web analytics tools label these as ‘no
referrer’). The volume of direct visitors shows the power of branding, PR and offline
communications in driving visitor traffic. In 2003, Statmarket (www.statmarket.com)
reported that direct navigation accounted for 65% of site visits worldwide, with 21%
following links and just 14% arriving by search engines. For first time visits, however,
search marketing is generally found to be over 20%.
We will now review the three main search engine marketing techniques for making a
company and its products visible through search engines:

(a) search engine optimisation (SEO)
(b) pay-per-click (PPC)
(c) trusted feed including paid-for inclusion.

1 SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING

Figure 8.14Relative traffic projections based on the ranking on search engine results
pages (visitor numbers are shown relative to 100 for position 1)
Source: Atlas (2004) (http://www.atlassolutions.com/pdf/RankReport.pdf)

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Key Google Overture

Visitors

Rank

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