Organic Search is Good, and Good for Your Budget
July 23rd, 2009 by John Rasco
This just in from BtoBOnline:
Natural search adherents learn the value of tweaks and tweets
It’s not news that marketing budgets have been cut to the bone, nor that even paid search expenditures are in a slump.
What is new, and slowly building over at least the past six months, is the realization by marketers that search engine optimization—the “free†kind of Web site tweaking based on content, metatags and link-building that helps a company get recognized in search queries—can return big, enduring benefits.
“Because of the recession, there has been an acceleration [in attempts] to figure out proper Web site optimization due to its lower cost overall and higher ROI,†said Aaron Kahlow, founder and CEO of the Online Marketing Summit conferences.
SEO GETS LEADS
“It’s forced us to ask what is the most effective way- to get traffic leads and sales,†he said. “And there’s almost no one out there who won’t say SEO is now No. 1 by far, with e-mail a close second.â€Besides attributing this burgeoning focus to the recession, Kahlow believes marketers are simply outgrowing old assumptions.
“It doesn’t take a lot of skill for the mainstream marketer to get started with paid search,†he said. “They’re used to paying for ads, and also perhaps some got burned by the SEO work done for them by snake oil salesmen. But today, there’s a gradual awakening to the virtues of natural search.â€