Search Engine Marketing Still Going Strong.

People in business crying the end in near for search engine marketing  with the purging of all the Black Hat SEO that’s been going on lately should stop waiting for the sky to fall in on the time honored technique. The 

 State of Search Marketing Report 2012 is a new account just released that shows there’s more money being spent this year than last—in fact the numbers add up to a 13% increase.

 That translates into some impressive statistics. North Americans will spend $23 billion in search engine marketing this year and those numbers are even projected to rise 13% in 2013. The new algorithms that Google has implemented over the last 18 months are seen as significant, but there’s a bit of a split when respondents were asked whether they viewed the changes as positive or negative. While many felt the shifts were for the better there were a number that worried combating these spam sites could cost legitimate companies rankings in a war of attrition of sorts.

There were some other interesting findings in the survey including:

• The fact that driving traffic is no longer the highest priority objective for marketers. Although most agencies that took part in the survey still cite SEO as their main objective, brand identification has risen from 5% in last year’s survey to over 11% this year
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• The expectations that companies have for social media haven’t really changed from one survey to the next. The sticking point is still the inability to find a good way to measure results in an empirical way.
• One of the bigger challenges remains the integration of both online and offline channels.

Search engine marketing is still going strong. The message from this survey is clear in that you need to be sure to use some element of this technique  if you want to have success advertising on the Internet. There are some fundamentals to keep in mind when you’re thinking about adopting one of these campaigns whether you want to apply the techniques to a more traditional website or a mobile one

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Remember there’s still no substitute for good content. Many small business owners are still convinced they can do it all themselves including the text, but professional wordsmiths will supply convincing language with keywords strategically placed to drive traffic to your site that converts into sales.

There are many different ways that you can implement search engine marketing, and it’s still one of the best anchors that supplies the exposure you need.