Online Retail Searches Soar Over Christmas Period
Online marketing campaigns during the run-up to Christmas appear to have paid off, with new figures published this week showing a record number of visits to online retailers over the festive season.
Search engine giant Google recorded an incredible 2.18 billion visits to retail websites throughout
December, representing a 4.8 per cent increase year-on-year.
The figure also represents something of a triumph for Search engine optimisation (SEO)-based online marketing, since a whopping 43 per cent of all visits to a retail website occurring after a search engine was used – mainly Google itself, which boasted ownership of an incredible nine out of ten of all retail searches on the internet last month.
SEO is one of the most effective internet marketing techniques there is to increase the visibility of a website and direct traffic to it. More traffic translates into more business and more profits, which is why it is vital to use affordable SEO to make your web page appear as high up Google’s search rankings as possible.
Online marketing experts agree that SEO marketing is absolutely crucial at special times of the year such as Christmas, Easter, Valentines Day or Halloween, since consumers are far more likely to make use of search engines when seeking gifts, party venues or restaurant bookings, plus various services that may also be required before or after any celebrations. Although an effective internet marketing campaign involves a careful mixture of techniques to increase brand awareness and generate traffic – techniques such as social networking, affiliates and blogging – it really makes sense to focus more strongly on paid and organic search marketing on the period leading up to and during these special occasions.
For its part, Google has hit the headlines again this week, for rather more controversial reasons. The search engine has unveiled a new feature known as “Search Plus Your World,” which provides search results not only based around Web content, but what’s on users of social networking spin-off Google+.
Google says that it wants to better personalise search results, whereas others claim it is sailing dangerously close to antitrust violations – a tactic of using its dominance in the search market to gain more ground in the area of social networking. Google+ is trying to become a rival to social networking leader Facebook, so expect formal protests to be lodged very soon. There may even be legal challenges further down the line.
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