Search engine optimization & search engine marketing

Why Search Engine Optimization?
Every day millions of web users find products, services and information through search queries performed on billions of web pages at the major search engines. This presents an enormous opportunity for businesses to market their products and services on the Web. However, since many web sites are competing for attention across the same set of keyword phrases you must do something to make your site's web pages appear more visible within the natural or organic search results of the search engines.

Since most web users abandon a search query when they do not find what they are looking for within the top-20 listings of the organic search results, any serious search engine marketing effort requires web pages to be optimized so that they appear on the first two search results pages.

Recent marketing studies have shown that the large majority of Internet users are using search to find the services and products they are looking for. Here are a few search engine research facts:

	75 percent of all consumers research online before buying offline. (BIG Research study)
	70 percent of search engine users are not going beyond the first search results page.
	Over 80 percent of web users find the products and services they're looking for by using a search engine, but only the top 30 results returned by those searches will ever generate significant site traffic. (Forrester Research and Georgia Tech's GVU Center User Surveys)
	23 percent of search engine users end their search after viewing the first few results listings on the first results page. 18 percent stop after reading the first entire page of results. 28 percent will not pass the second search results (top-20) if the search is not successful. (iProspect - "Search Engine User Attitudes Survey" - March 2004 )
	Companies and businesses that are found in the top of the search results increase their perceived brand equity. 33 percent of Internet users view companies that are listed within the opening listing of the search results as top in their field.
	Search engines are moving from the hundreds of millions into the billions of web pages indexed, as a result competition for top-20 positions is increasing.

Search Engine Optimization Facts

	Organic listings have a perceived higher value because they provide a high level of credibility. Web users prefer organic search listings over paid search listings 3 to 1.
	When the search engine marketing budget is limited search engine optimization is the best option to achieve the high ranking organic listings for a wide range of targeted keyword phrases. (MarketingSherpa - 1/2006)
	35 percent of search marketers found that natural search optimization produced higher ROI than paid search ads. (Jupiter Research Study - 9/2005)
	When users are in the research phase of the buying process consumers show a strong preference for organic listings. (Jupiter Research Study - 9/2005)

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