Ravi
Sen
(College Station)—How often have you used Google or your favorite search engine to find just what you're looking for online? Researchers at Texas A&M University's Mays Business School say that's how about 80 percent of web surfers find consumer sites and product information. Yet there's a lot to be desired as both the search engines and the companies that use them for advertising try to find a balance profitable for everyone.
When it comes to search engine marketing, companies use either paid placements on search engines or search engine optimization, the process of altering their web sites with targeted keywords to improve visibility, rank and relevance in searches.
Although evidence shows that buyers tend to ignore paid placement advertising, it is still preferred as the most effective marketing strategy for online sellers because of the high cost and inconsistency of search engine optimization. That's what Mays professor Ravi Sen found in a recent study.
Traffic is the key element to conducting business online, and search engines serve as a portal for all of this activity, said Sen, assistant professor of information and operations management and author of the article, "Optimal Search Engine Marketing Strategy."
Many companies pay a fee to guarantee fast registration with the search engines and to ensure a search engine "spider" will visit its site to stay current and update the site and its keywords within the index. This, however, is not enough to promise that a company's website will figure in the top search listings of a search engine.
Sen said search engine marketing is most prevalent through paid placement campaigns, which put a company's listing automatically at the top of the search-results page. The process of search engine marketing with paid placements begins with a company paying to get listed on a search engine site. If a company has a popular keyword, it may have to pay more to buy paid placements.
But despite its potential to be effective, search engine optimization is more expensive because companies need mirror websites that are optimized for different search engines and have to be updated regularly. This marketing strategy is only beneficial to companies who show up in the back pages of search results because the search engine flags these companies' sites to give them a more prominent listing. "But even this technique wouldn't change the rankings that much. It's primarily a consultant fad, and paid placements are much easier," Sen said.
Search engines play a critical role not only for consumers who are searching for a product, but also for the companies who use them to enhance their exposure and business. "The objective is to get listed in the first few listings on the search-results page," Sen said. "It's the whole focus of search engine marketing."
Sen's research appears in the fall 2005 International Journal of Electronic
Commerce. 