Beyond the Banner

Enable Interactive , the web solution division of India's Top rated portal Indbazaar.com has launched the Search Engine Optimization Services in Bombay, India.

Beyond the banner

Search: Optimization
Banner advertising has come under a lot of question regards its potency as a branding vehicle or as pay per click model. With click-through rates dropping drastically and visibility campaigns getting increasingly ineffective, alternates are being sought. The debate will continue regards online advertising as a branding or targeted means of marketing with multiple views for and against.

However we focus on a relatively old tool that has come to the foreground in the recent past, as a vehicle that drives targeted, measurable audiences to business offerings are placement of your site in search engines.

Bite this:
According to Jupiter Media Metrix (September 2001):

28 percent type a product name into a search engine.

23 percent go straight to the URL.

9 percent type a brand name into a search engine.

5 percent type a company name into a search engine.

5 percent go to a search engine-shopping channel.

Majority of all online traffic is generated through top 15 search engines and notably through Yahoo, Google, Inktomi and FAST engines. Be it industry specific searches or more generic ones, the tool is a heaven for marketers.

Why?
Marketers are falling in line to explore opportunities to not only drive increased traffic to web-sites but also to drive focused audiences, to advertising messages.

Conversions as well as visibility numbers indicate the benefits besides the ROI is much better than on a banner campaign.

If you take the Statistics, the traffic generated through any one of these search engines will be of multi folds of what you getting through any banner ad campaigns ever run.

A study by NPD Group reported that search engines outperformed banner ads three to one. More than twice as many respondents recognized companies listed in the top three search positions than companies featured in banner ads.

Case studies based on client-server file logs show that search engine traffic outperforms banner ads and email marketing campaigns by producing more purchases, form or catalog requests, newsletter subscriptions, and software downloads.

Examples are numerous and options many, targeting industry specific audiences, geo-targeting and branding, on the basis of selected keywords and filtering to get definite results (Some experts believe traffic to sites can increase upto 75% if placed well on the search engines) are only some of the possibilities.

It is impossible to ignore the need for a service, communication option such as this and more and more people are joining the bandwagon to explore the infinite possibilities this vehicle offers to make their enterprise a truly global one.

Surfers are literally asking for your marketing message. Even potential buyers who find a site via a search engine are actively looking for your products and services.

Various case studies also show that companies can also land big clients through their Web sites alone without even having to initiate other forms of communication.

Examples include Software Company Welocalize that reported search engines drive 90 percent of site traffic, with traffic patterns ranging from 5,000 to 10,000 user sessions per month.

Database software firm Syncsort generates over 75 percent of its leads from the Web via search engine listings.

Automotive consumer resource site Edmunds.com, logged 1.2 million visitors from search engines and directories last June, attracting over 7 million visitors from search engines over the past year.

More businesses than ever before are discovering the benefits of optimized placements with enhanced reach and a global marketplace.

In the event of this newfound tool the options available before marketers and businesses revolve from performance based placements to keyword marketing options or combinations besides placements for specific industry messages etc.

One should be thorough with the complex frequently changing algorithms of the various engines. Ongoing Position maintenance is needed as the search engines change their algorithms quite frequently, and when this happens the relevance scoring method also changes, as a result the positions might drop.

Maintenance and Monitoring of your positions on the search engines are important.

We believe that your brands can benefit largely in the form of higher visibility, recall and a true performance based exercise in branding online.

Do not hesitate to mail me with any doubts or questions that you may have with regards the optimization process.

For Further Details Please visit

http://www.enableinteractive.com

e mail - Amit Zaveri - amit@indbazaar.co.in