Business recognises the importance of SEO like never before. The growth in the search engine marketing field has been incredible, far exceeding most other industries. In the past achieving listings in search engines has been very much taken for granted by many businesses, being treated as less important as the standard marketing methods such as newspaper, television and radio advertising. With more internet consumers utilising search as their first options for finding a business of choice, search engine marketing has come to the forefront of marketing.

A few main advantages of search engine marketing over other marketing methods are: 1. The cost by comparison is quite low to perform search engine marketing over other forms of marketing. 2. Internet users are often much more qualified by the time they find your site as they have been searching for your specific service or product. 3. Your advertising is running seven days a week, twenty four hours a day. To attain this kind of exposure through any other form of marketing would blow any businesses marketing budget out the window.

The fact that SEO is a much cheaper form of advertising (and an extremely effective one) has not gone unnoticed for many savvy businesses. Realisation that cost of acquisition is markedly cheaper means that many companies are directing increased resources from their marketing budgets towards search engine marketing campaigns.

In the search engine marketing game, Google is clearly the leader. Estimates vary as to how much of the market Google actually has, but most estimates are around 75%. This being the case; while it is important to focus on Google, Yahoo and MSN when optimising your site, the majority of focus should be spent on Google.

If you don't have a proper SEM strategy in place, or part of your marketing budget set aside for search engine marketing, I suggest that you seriously rethink your marketing strategy and look at the benefits that your company or business can achieve through having a strong presence in the search engines. You can be fairly certain that your competitors are either utilising search engine marketing, or seriously considering it.

Do you really want them having a competitive advantage over you with your business being left behind?

About the author:

Andrew Seidel - SEO Specialist and Search Engine Marketing Consultant for Quantum Web Solutions in Sydney, Australia.