In the Search Engine Marketing Buyer’s Guide (2008) recently published by E-consultancy (September 2008), they reported that the market for spend on search engine marketing was estimated to be worth £2.75 billion this year in the UK alone.
As a UK business owner, you may not be interested in that fact but where the numbers start to tell a story is how they’re split between paid search (£2.42 billion) and search engine optimisation (£330 million).
This split is mirrored by data released by SEMPO which has the US advertisers investing just 11% of their Internet marketing spend on search engine optimisation ($1.3 billion).
As a company that helps businesses with both of these core aspects of search engine marketing, we can appreciate why there is such an investment in PPC advertising. However, we find it intriguing that search engine optimisation (SEO) is so far behind in the spend stakes being treated with the same disregard as an Icelandic bank savings account. Perhaps it suffers from the feeling some site owners have that SEO is free? The notion of free listings is valid but for any business to not be making provision for SEO in their online marketing budget is short-sighted, particularly when you review the following:
Google Eye Tracking Heat Map
This eye tracking heat map from Enquiro clearly highlights the fact that most searchers still go top-left when conducting a search. It demonstrates that the sites occupying the top 3 slots of the natural search results will attract 100% visibility and only dropping to 50% at position 6. Compare this to the PPC adverts where the ad at position #1 only achieves 50% visibility. This falls dramatically to 10% by the time you get to the ad in position 5.
Hopefully, you’ll appreciate the value in SEO and understand why free isn’t always best.
We offer a range of search engine optimisation services and would welcome the opportunity to demonstrate how we could help your business improve its online visibility.
Further Reading:
Eyetools Eyetracking Research
The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers have just published data showing that investment in Internet advertising remains buoyant despite the uncertain economic climate.
Their research shows an increase in spend of some 15.2% for the first six months of 2008 compared to the same period in the previous year. In total, $11.5 billion was spent on Internet advertising which I used to think was a lot until I realised how much governments spend on bailing out badly managed financial institutions.
Read More:
Crunch-Proof – The Rise of Internet Advertising in 2008
In a recent article published by eMarketer (Online to Pass TV Ad Spend in UK), they have completed an excellent review of a forecast by Group M that predicts UK Internet Advertising will exceed that spent on Television advertising by 2009.
If this is true, it would make the UK the first country to see spend on online advertising overtake that spent on TV.
This is not the only forecast that has predicted the UK to be leading the pack when it comes to Internet advertising with the IAB publishing a similar forecast in October 2006.
Overall, Group M forecasts 2008 online advertising spend to be £3.4 billion with 65% coming from search.
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.
