The Importance of Search to A Marketer

As search engines, have become essential to a web user’s Internet experience,

so, search has become essential to a marketer. Search is important for a

number of reasons:

1. Search is goal oriented: people use search to find the things they

want and need.

The Internet is a highly competitive environment, with literally billions of

pages in existence. So how does anyone find the page they’re after? Web users

find what they need primarily via search. Search drives targeted traffic (and

therefore sales) to websites. A web search is a signal of intent from a web user.

2. Search engines are the doorway to the Internet.

According to comScore, 95% of the global Internet population visited a search

engine in August 2007.

3. The search industry is BIG.

The daily search volume numbers are in the hundred millions. Research figures

indicate that more than 131 billion searches were conducted in December

2009. That’s four billion searches per day, 175 million per hour, and 2.9 million

per minute (comScore 2010).

4. To be found you must be visible.

If you want your website to generate a significant amount of traffic, it needs to

be listed on the major search engines and listed high up enough to be seen.

Statistics show that users are not likely to view listings beyond the first 30

results, with the top six (above the fold) listings enjoying the lion’s share of

clicks (Eyetools).

5. Top of search equates to top of mind awareness.

Beyond traffic, a high ranking website is valuable for brand perception. Web

users often perceive search engine results as an indication of authority. Search

visibility promotes brand recognition and research has shown that search

engine listings can stimulate brand recall by 220% (Enquiro, 2007).

6. People trust organic search.

Research has shown that over 71% of people have more trust in organic results

than paid search results (Prussakov, 2008).

7. Catch potential customers at every phase of the buying cycle.

Most purchases are subject to a buying cycle. At different points in that cycle,

prospects are searching with different key phrases. Give them what they want

at each phase, and they will keep coming back till they’re ready to buy. And

they’ll be ready to buy more quickly, because information is the best way to

shorten the buying cycle.

8. Many people have a search engine as their browser home page.

Often, the home page of a browser is set to a search engine. Many users

enter URLs into the search engine instead of the address bar of the browser –

meaning that even if they know the URL of a website, they are finding it throughsearch.