May 10, 2010

Marketing Executive Recruiters Agree – Search Engine marketing paying off big for retail marketers

Posted by Wendy Weber

In a study by Internet Retailer called Search Engine Marketing, the conclusion is:  Retailers have to stay on top of search engine marketing because it is a marketing channel that not only brings in customers but brings in cash.

28.0% of merchants report more than 25% of their site traffic stems from paid search advertisements while 51.5% say more than a quarter of their traffic comes from natural search. In the past year, 44.9% of merchants report that the conversion rate on pay-per-click search advertising went up, 16.3% say it went down and 38.8% say their conversion rate held steady. And 47% report more than 25% of their web sales stem from search engine marketing, according to Internet Retailer’s new search engine marketing survey of 102 web-only retailers, chain retailers, catalogers and consumer brand manufacturers.

Google dominates the search engine landscape, but Microsoft’s Bing has been making inroads since its launch in June 2009.  Microsoft and Yahoo have agreed that Bing will become the search engine used on Yahoo sites, and when that occurs Bing will become the clear No. 2 to Google in traffic.

On top of that, 44.6% increased their paid search budgets in the past year and 49% say they will increase it in the year ahead.

In