According to Hitwise, paid searches are down by 26% for the same period last year. This is a significant change which is said to reflect the problems of the current economic climate.

What are paid searches?
Paid searches are those where a company pays for its ranking on a search engine. It is something that is very easy to set up but requires a certain level of skill to implement well. Your company’s important keywords are identified (this is a skilful process which takes careful analysis and a degree of creative thought and artistry). Once you have these words you can approach search engines who then charge you for promoting your site according to your keyword choices.

The paid searches appear at the top of the search listings and are usually distinguishable from the natural listings by a difference in size, colour or highlighting. The theory is that the top listings will be clicked on more. Each time someone clicks on your link you pay the search engine company an agreed amount which is dependant on the popularity of your chosen keywords. An accurate keyword campaign can be very lucrative and a misguided one, very costly. Google Adwords makes the process very easy and anyone can set up an account and start experimenting with the results. Google analytics is a programme which looks at your traffic and click-through conversion rates and helps to guide further changes and although available to all, is a complicated and technical programme.

Decline in Paid Searches
The Hitwise survey found that in the four-week period ending in April 2008, nearly 10% (9.84%) of search engine traffic came from paid clicks. This figure declined by 26% for the same period in 2009 to 7.25%. The only sector which reported an increase in paid advertisement was education which saw a rise from 1.39% to 1.45%.

Reasons for Change
Although paid searches guarantee you a top-spot they can be costly. Avoiding high costs means being skilled at choosing the right words and analysing the results and this means either investing a lot of time in getting you or your staff up to speed or employing experts who can guide your campaign within your overall marketing strategy.

Avoiding high costs has led people to look at cheaper ways to market their online presence. A greater awareness of how search engines like to rank has led to people making more of their sites in a bid to increase natural listings. The search engines are super-open with information on how to make to most of your site naturally.

Social networking sites have created a platform from where to funnel visitors to your site and their increasing popularity is having its effect. The same applies to bloging which is a cost effective way to gather cross-market traffic. Additionally email marketing has increased in popularity as it is a highly personal and cost effective way to target your market.

Conclusions
We will more than likely see an increase in creative, natural and viral marketing campaigns which will reflect the needs of the current economic climate.  However with the high levels of competition that are set to increase in the natural search listings market, paid listings are still a very serious option.  We may see a reduction in costs for pay-per-click as there will be less competition for keywords.  The important point is that whatever you do it needs to be cost effective.  Implementing the right campaign and analysing the results to capitalise on your successes and minimise your risks will be essential and seeking expert guidance in order to do this is highly recommended.

According to a research poll conducted by KPMG , only 16% of Britons would prefer to pay for online content that was free of advertising. In contrast two thirds of UK consumers said that they would watch online ads if they could get free digital content.

In theory this adds weight to those who believe that the way forward is to continue to have free access to online services rather than rely on subscription to find revenue.

Trying to implement subscriptions in the current climate however might be tricky anyway. People are feeling the pinch and after all, we are now used to amazing, free sites. How would we feel if we had to pay for something that we now consider to be normal to access for free? Would we be prepared to do it?

So, currently, free sites with advertising seem to be a win-win combination. And infact, we are actively encouraged to see this as a model for success in search engine rankings no matter how big or small our business is. Search engines will rank our sites better if we have regular free and useful content and we can use, Google Adsense, for example to earn a potential income. The more useful our site, the more visitors, the more revenue we can get from advertising. We are not just talking about the big guns here – it applies to all.

Some people just ignore the adverts or don’t even notice it.  On the other hand, there is great potential now for specific targeting. Facebook, for example are honing in on people’s stated interests which can enable them to really provide value for money for their advertisers: catching those who are receptive with goods and services they are most likely to engage with.  Facebook, also however, claim legal rights to people’s information and this has been the subject of much controversy.

The poll found that consumers were most receptive to advertisements when they were shopping (47%) and using social network sites (35%) and least receptive when on a phone call and using navigation tools which is understandable considering the focused and active nature of these tasks.