Top Trends in Search Marketing

What do you think are the top 3 trends in search marketing?

Marketing Sherpa says they are:

• Search Engines as TV Networks Jockeying for Audience -- 127 Million Americans use search engines, yet most of the activity is concentrated in a few search engines. Marketing Sherpa likens this to the domination of 3 TV networks in the 1970's. One interesting factoid is that the Ask Jeeves search engine has tripled its market share since last year, although it is still a mere fraction of Google's share. I wonder how much of that might be related to its acquisition of Bloglines, the popular RSS search engine.



• SEO Still a Tiny Portion of Total Search Marketing Spend -- Most companies are pouring money into paid search (pay per click). A far smaller percentage goes to optimizing web pages so that they show up better in the organic search results. The reason? Search optimization is considered too complex and so apparently executives find it easier to ignore SEO. Sounds to me like an opportunity for the SEO firms to improve their marketing messages.



• Search Marketing - A New Application for Press Releases -- The very reason that press releases are "dead" when it comes to getting media attention, is why they are great for search marketing. Because press releases get indexed in major search engines, media isn't interested in simply regurgitating them and has dropped them like a stone. However, press releases show up promptly and prominently in the search engines and bring Web traffic, if not media eyeballs.

The executive summary of the Marketing Sherpa Trend report is open access and can be found here (PDF). Read the whole thing.