Thursday, December 2, 2010

Search Marketing

Consumers frequently utilize search marketing indirectly, which is to say they enter search terms into an engine without considering how those terms will impact an individual site’s ranking. While search marketing is an enormously important part of online marketing, for consumers the most important aspect is the end result. If they see a website which offers the services or products they are seeking, they will stop searching. If they don’t, they will continue to click through website search results, or enter additional terms in order to find specifically what they are seeking.

Essentially, consumers do not place nearly the emphasis or calculation into search marketing that advertisers or small businesses do, but they still make use of the basic technology. Consumers often have a somewhat specific notion of what it is they would like to find; when the first search results do not display what they are after, they may concoct more elaborate terms, adding information into their search to try and pull out a more specific result.

For advertisers and marketers attempting to formulate the perfect search marketing strategy, anticipating how consumers will react with a search engine is perhaps the most difficult part of keyword formulation and ‘tail-terms.’ Tail-terms, which are defined as those terms that are likely to follow the most popular keywords, grow in complexity and can encompass a much wider frame of reference. Consumers may choose to concoct bizarre tail terms according to their own personal way of visualizing a product or service.

Search marketing for consumers is therefore a highly individual experience. A consumer attempts to match the picture that is in his or her head to what displays on the screen. By adding, subtracting, or altering the search terminology, the consumer gradually finds what it is he or she is seeking. However, from the perspective of the advertiser or business owner, effective search marketing requires that all potentially lucrative search terms are anticipated and properly channeled to the company website.

While there is no anticipated surge in consumers attempting to read up on the finer points of search marketing, consumers ultimately are interacting with the effects of the strategy each time they open up their browser window and perform a search. Search marketing, like second hand smoke, affects the consumer without them necessarily playing a direct role. Advertisers and business owners owe it to themselves to understand the psychology of likely visitors when formulating their search marketing strategy.