I have recently been playing with Google Trends, a great free tool from Google Labs that allows you to search the most popularly searched keywords. From using this tool I have discovered something very interesting relating to the wonderful world of search marketing.

This year (2008) SEO has for the first time surpassed PPC in terms of people wanting to know about these services. According to the figures presented by Google Trends, more people are now searching the keyword SEO then PPC.

The results indicate that the keyword SEO is generally increasing in popularity due to the significant growth the keyword has achieved over the last year. I may even stick my neck out here and say that this is a big indication of the growing importance of search engine optimisation (SEO). I say this because these figures are purely based on Google searches and Google represents about 85% of all the UK’s online search activity, so with this in mind, this is potentially unprecedented proof in the raise of SEO’s importance.

Maybe the potential credit crunch has aided this increase in interest into SEO. The figures provided by Google Trends could suggest that companies are tightening their advertising budgets as the economy slows in favour of longer term investments to achieve a better free natural placement in search engines.

Pay per click is a great platform for online marketing and instant visibility but it does have its downsides. The moment you run out of budget your position on the search engines is lost and so is your potential to generate further traffic to your website. However an efficient and professionally crafted search engine optimisation (SEO) campaign, which does take longer to implement and index, would yield longer term results in terms of search ranking and traffic.

In essence, natural SEO is free and web users generally prefer natural to paid search results. It’s really a trust issue; Users generally click on PPC adverts less than natural search results.

As a SEO expert I may even go so far as to say that PPC is now second to SEO in terms of cost effectiveness. Is it possible that UK businesses that have an online presence have finally woken up to the potential of SEO? As an SEO company we most certainly hope so!!!!

Below is a graph that I got from Google Trends relating to this topic where you can see exactly what I have been talking about in terms of SEO becoming more popular then PPC. In the graph the red line represent PPC and the blue line represents SEO.

If you want to know more about SEO services then call us on 01273 704 771

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 16th, 2008 at 8:58 am and is filed under Google. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.