Get your site on top of the search results

Or pay enough, so your advertisement will be on the top spots. But why it's important to get high rankings in organic search results?

• over 3 million people uses Internet in Finland
  
• more than half of these users are buying online
• there are approximately 5 million searches per day
• up to 80 % of searchers ingore paid listings
• almost every searcher is looking at the two or three top search results
• searchers spend less time looking at results ranked below top three
  
• almost 90 % of searchers don't scroll down if they find something useful on the top results

So, are you in or out of these search markets? Getting your site on top of the list with your keyword isn't still enough. Then you have to get users to click the search link...or your paid ad.

Sources: Tilastokeskus, Digitoday and Search Engine Marketing, Inc.

Google rules - at least in Finland

When it comes to search engines, Google seems to rule the market. This may not come as a surprise to anyone. I started reading about Search Engine Marketing, Inc. and got couple of interesting firures from the beginning.

• Google leads in customer loyalty: 66 % of searchers don't switch to another search site
• Google's global share of searches is 43,7 %, Yahoo 28,8 % and MSN 12,8 %
  

In Finland the figures are totally different. According to Naviatech's research Google's share is 94,3 %, Windows Live 3,1 % and MSN 2,5 % (measured by Index Tools from 22 sites during 1.1.-20.6.2007).

www.naviatech.fi collected about 8,500 visitors total at the same timespan and 25 % of them from Google. 98,75 % of all searches to our site came from Google (well, we have optimized our site especially with Google in mind), but it's still pretty much, isn't it?

It's quite obvious where marketers should focus their efforts. And they will: according to Divia's research, marketers think that the search engine marketing is very important and they are ready to invest. Banner and search engine marketing are relatively growing most in the area of digital marketing.

Sources: Index Tools statistics, Helsinki School of Economics, Search Engine Marketing, Inc. and www.tietokone.fi

Sea Life Helsinki tracks its visitors

Piraijas

Yesterday evening Sea Life Helsinki celebrated its fifth anniversary and over a million visitors. According to Managing Director Allan Malmström constant renewal is one of the key factors in their success.

This also includes web marketing. Sea Life started web analytics in November 2006 and currently gets about 15,000 visitors to their website per month, most of them from Google's organic search.

Jelly-fish

Internet is the company's second best marketing channel after personal recommendations. Online marketing brings customers to Sea Life and 30-40 percent of visitors have looked for information about the company from the Internet.

"It's very important to know the right keywords to plan your online marketing activities in the future"
Marketing Manager Vilma Gustafsson

Up and running

Finally, after a while, I opened my blog. Why on earth? That is a good question. Here's couple of good reasons:

• natural pressure from other professionals and colleagues
  
• anxiety to share information and experiences
• informal place to shout out own opinions and ideas
  
• possibility to have comments and different point of views
• writing seems to be very therapeutic
  
• search engine optimization
• sales & branding
  
• curiosity

I try to start topics from easy and understandable level. I hope this blog gives something for beginners but I also hope it leads in more in-depht conversations or debates. Feel free to comment, ask a question or suggest a topic to discuss.

I decided to keep it in English, sorry for grammar errors which may occur regularly. I hope my English gets better. Today I spent approximately 3 hours with starting this blog, not bad by the way. I hope it's worthwile, I'll let you know... : )