When you were a kid and you had something to find for a research project, chances are the first place you went was to the library. Next step along the way was leafing through the card catalog (back before they were digitized) or browsing through the library's sections by topic (how convenient that they broke it down that way). Finally, you'd pull your hair out and yell at your sister for looking stupid because you had amassed so many books that had some vague correlation with your topic that you didn't know where to begin and she was always an easy place to displace your frustration.
This process has been used for generations, and until recently was the preferred method of literary discovery. Only recently (in the last 10 years or so) have giant libraries with credible sourcing been put in place to help make academic writing easier to wade through. But the problem is that even with sites like JSTOR you have to hone in your keywords if you don't want to look through thousands of titles trying to find something with any relevance to your search subject.
This process varies little from your average consumer and their desire to find a product online. Prior to the advent of the internet, commercial marketing and the yellow pages were about the only way to find a business that provided goods or services you were after. Nowadays all you have to do is type "paint" into Google and you'll get 231 million hits in about .2 seconds (yeah... I actually did it so go ahead and do it yourself if you think I'm joking).
Even with more specific searching like "house paint," "car paint," or "painters for hire" you'll still return millions of hits. With so many "relevant" hits, where is a person to look to find what they need? As is probably pretty obvious unless you still had trouble making the connection between fork, knife and food when you were 12 years old, you are going to look at the first 10, MAYBE first 20 or 30 hits before you call it quits. That means that out of a possible 231 thousand hit pages (that's right kiddies... just divide by 10 and you'll get the amount of pages that display those 231 million hits) for keyword "paint" you will at most look through 3 pages. How then, are these pages categorized? Why are some on page 1, and others on page 230,999,999?
Search engine optimization (SEO) is one of a couple of methods people use to become "visible" on the net. Of course, sites can use paid inclusion to get into some engines or start pay per click (PPC) campaigns on others like Google, but those still don't guarantee listing or relevant placement. When a company steps into Search Engine Marketing (SEM) they instantly get a leg up on the rest of their industry that doesn't fool with such methods. These companies who refuse the new model of internet efficiency become relics of the past when being a relic of the past in this case makes about as much sense as, well, being a relic of the past.
From being involved in a SEM/SEO environment, I've watched first hand as companies have made a complete turn-around on a seemingly failed section of their marketing schema; they've become profitable in ways they didn't imagine possible just because they took an interest in this market which has existed since the first search engines came out in the late 90's. Rather than let the gods of the internet be in deciding their fate of placement, businesses with a proactive stance on their brand get noticed for it.
It's funny how people are focused on staying in the same mode of thought for so long that they refuse to change with the times. Often people do change, it's just entirely too late. You know, like the grocery store that adds the new flavor of Doritos two months before the end of the promotion, religious reform in convicted criminals or that guy who still searches out info on his term papers from the card catalog.
This process has been used for generations, and until recently was the preferred method of literary discovery. Only recently (in the last 10 years or so) have giant libraries with credible sourcing been put in place to help make academic writing easier to wade through. But the problem is that even with sites like JSTOR you have to hone in your keywords if you don't want to look through thousands of titles trying to find something with any relevance to your search subject.
This process varies little from your average consumer and their desire to find a product online. Prior to the advent of the internet, commercial marketing and the yellow pages were about the only way to find a business that provided goods or services you were after. Nowadays all you have to do is type "paint" into Google and you'll get 231 million hits in about .2 seconds (yeah... I actually did it so go ahead and do it yourself if you think I'm joking).
Even with more specific searching like "house paint," "car paint," or "painters for hire" you'll still return millions of hits. With so many "relevant" hits, where is a person to look to find what they need? As is probably pretty obvious unless you still had trouble making the connection between fork, knife and food when you were 12 years old, you are going to look at the first 10, MAYBE first 20 or 30 hits before you call it quits. That means that out of a possible 231 thousand hit pages (that's right kiddies... just divide by 10 and you'll get the amount of pages that display those 231 million hits) for keyword "paint" you will at most look through 3 pages. How then, are these pages categorized? Why are some on page 1, and others on page 230,999,999?
Search engine optimization (SEO) is one of a couple of methods people use to become "visible" on the net. Of course, sites can use paid inclusion to get into some engines or start pay per click (PPC) campaigns on others like Google, but those still don't guarantee listing or relevant placement. When a company steps into Search Engine Marketing (SEM) they instantly get a leg up on the rest of their industry that doesn't fool with such methods. These companies who refuse the new model of internet efficiency become relics of the past when being a relic of the past in this case makes about as much sense as, well, being a relic of the past.
From being involved in a SEM/SEO environment, I've watched first hand as companies have made a complete turn-around on a seemingly failed section of their marketing schema; they've become profitable in ways they didn't imagine possible just because they took an interest in this market which has existed since the first search engines came out in the late 90's. Rather than let the gods of the internet be in deciding their fate of placement, businesses with a proactive stance on their brand get noticed for it.
It's funny how people are focused on staying in the same mode of thought for so long that they refuse to change with the times. Often people do change, it's just entirely too late. You know, like the grocery store that adds the new flavor of Doritos two months before the end of the promotion, religious reform in convicted criminals or that guy who still searches out info on his term papers from the card catalog.
Internet advertising was subjected to broadcast media metrics from the beginning. CPM, or Cost Per Thousand Impressions, was borrowed from print and was accepted by traditional advertisers as a measure of reach and frequency. Back then, if a company had a site to point to it was largely brochureware, a corporate identity on the web. But when the bubble burst its effectiveness beyond branding was questioned. The industry shifted to Cost Per Click around the same time that most companies had transactions...