Recently Nielsen//NetRatings published the results of their 2004/2005 online search study. For the month of December 2004, they reported 3.279 billion searches and for December 2005, 5.069 billion searches in the US. This is an amazing 55% growth, especially when one considers the fact that the number of US residents connected to the internet grew only by 3% in that same period.

This substantial increase in the use of search engines points to fundamental changes in user behavior, and tells us that your prospect customers are ever more relying on search portals (like Google and Yahoo!) to navigate the internet and to conduct research prior to making a purchase – this trend accentuates the importance of considering search based advertising as one, and maybe the most important, of your marketing venues.

What is Search Positioning?

The goal of search positioning is to place your site as close as possible to the top of search results pages on internet search engines like Google and Yahoo!, because the closer you appear to the top, the more likely your web site will be visited. Search engines use a wide variety of methods to assess and designate the relevance of a website in relation to keywords used on your site. For instance, educational and government institutions usually get higher rankings. The popularity of a website – when referenced by other sites – also plays a role. Recently search engines have started taking into account individual preferences and use patterns to affect ranking thus making it a bit harder for website administrators to predict positioning.

Search positioning comes in two forms, “free” (also referred as “natural” or “organic” search results) and “sponsored” (or Pay Per Click – PPC).

Up to now free rankings in major search engines has been one of the most efficient and cost-effective ways to market your attraction on the Internet. The problem is, in most cases you do not have direct influence on the position of your website in natural search results.

Sponsored links are increasing in popularity, not only in the number of advertisers purchasing these ads but also in the number of users that assign relevance and credibility to the links because they know the advertiser is paying to be there.

What you need to know.

The bottom line is your customers - businesses, visitors, families looking to relocate, and anyone else you are targeting with a message - expect to find you online and if they don’t find you there, they are not likely to find you at all. So, it is important to take steps to enhance your natural position in search results and you should consider a modest investment (you can start with less than $10.00) in sponsored advertising.

For additional resources on how to build your sponsored advertising campaign and to learn how to enhance your natural search position, consider reviewing the sample campaign we’ve created for nature tourism operations. It’s available online at www.ed-central.com/resourcelibrary.