Search engine optimization and search engine marketing work together in tandem, but while search continues to attract all the buzz, SEO is often overlooked--especially by upper management, writes
iMedia columnist Paul Bruemmer. A company's Web site is ultimately what drives a company's success online, and search marketing is what fuels it, driving qualified leads to the site that have a higher
probability of converting. As important as the various facets of search are--pay-per-click, paid inclusion, contextual, pay-per-call--SEO should be viewed as the foundation of a company's search
strategy. Why? Because 70 percent of search click-throughs come from natural listings versus 30 percent from paid listings. If most of your traffic by default comes from natural listings, it should be
priority number one for marketers to optimize their Web site for search engines' crawlers. Companies whose natural listing appears in the top three results, appear under the top three sponsored
listings on the page before users have to scroll down. This is the area where you want your site to show up, because most users go for one of the top three natural choices.
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