Hitwise, one of the Internet’s leading authorities on web-wide statistics and analytics, released statistics surrounding healthy snacks and the search patterns related to it.
Whilst the subject itself may not be to your taste, it does perfectly highlight the need to not only achieve a high ranking on search engines, but also provide relevant information for when visitors arrive.
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SEO and Internet marketing agencies are often given a bit of a rough ride. As an industry, it is not without its charlatans and is still tarnished by the bad old days of black hat upstarts propelling websites up the search rankings through the shadiest of methods.
Search engines have made it increasingly difficult for websites to cheat the system. Their complex set of rules and finely tuned algorithms ensure a far higher level of quality from any SERP (search engine results page). Modern-day SEO is all about adding quality through a series of multi-faceted processes; not simply spamming select pages full of white text or keywords. It can take time and exhaustive effort to make up a few places in the rankings.
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It has long been known that searchers very often search for a brand for research purposes or even as a preference to typing the URL straight into their browser.
By way of example, Google estimate that there are an average of just over 300,000 searches for ‘coca cola’ every month.
To reinforce this message, Hitwise UK have announced in their recent newsletter that 88% of searches for the top 2000 most popular keywords performed during May 2008 were for brands. Not surprisingly, ‘facebook’ was top of the brand searches accounting for 1 in every 72 searches performed. (Facebook Becomes Third Most Visited Site in UK)
Clearly, it is impossible to know the intent of the individual user when they search for a specific brand but UK online advertisers will need to consider the implications of this, particularly after Google removed restrictions on bidding on trademarked terms within their AdWords Pay per Click platform back in April.
According to a recent survey commissioned by Internet Advertising Bureau UK, the amount of money invested in online advertising has risen to £1.33 billion for the first six months of this year compared to £917.2 million for the same period in 2006.
The survey goes on to suggest that UK online advertising spend could reach £2.75 billion by the end of 2007.
Such has been the growth in UK Internet advertising that it now accounts for almost 15% of all UK advertising. Again, this is a figure that most expect will continue to rise in the coming years as more businesses and individuals move over to the Internet.
57.1% of the total spent to date has been invested in paid search, or Pay per Click (PPC). With £762.3 million spent, this is a 44% increase compared to 2006.
