How important is the search engine?

[Gajandra D]

For most site owners, especially mid-size and/or fast growing businesses, Google organic and paid search engine marketing strategies are critical to success. However, different situations may arise calling for less reliance on Google. Below are a few points outlining steps you can take if you find yourself in a situation where you need to lighten your Google paid search campaigns.

# Proactively build online loyalty

* The experience people have with your product shapes their perception of your brand
* Social networking and consumer-generated content have significant momentum

# Forcefully protect your brand; especially on search engines

* A brand is more than a name or symbol
* A brand is a perception of what the name means
* Creating a great customer experience is the essence of good branding
* Perceptions of a brand can be measured

# Aggressively develop website natural search results

* Non-brand keywords provide huge opportunities in natural search
* Brand keywords are essential in natural search
* Keyword research, diagnostic audits and link building are critical paths
* Developing an in-house natural search team is obvious; training them is vital
* Explore Local Search opportunities
* Optimize for Universal Search

# Expand and diversify paid search engine marketing programs beyond Google

* Include networks like Miva, Snap, and LookSmart
* Look directly at keyword ROI rather than bids

# Vigorously utilize and optimize search engine feeds

* When appropriate, take advantage of shopping comparison enginesShopping.com, BizRate, PriceGrabber, Google Base, NexTag, Yahoo! Shopping, mySimon, etc.

A lot of attention is always heaped on search engine tricks and know how. This can enhance your traffic but most importantly you as the merchant should always rely on hard experience with your product not just some shortcut that might work for someone else. Do your research and most important of all "know what you are selling".

[David Tan]

Which makes me wonder if it's better to utilize many channels of marketing and advertising or just focus on a few methods and really improving on it.

Start with google, increase mah skillz (SEO, ranking, etc), then move on to other channels, other search engines and such?

[marketraise2007]

The Web is probably the only place to get proper information on almost any topic that keeps haunting the human mind time to time.It's important that one gives some thoughts prior to performing the search.It doesn't matter what ever your search query is, the Web search engine is undoubtedly the best choice to get answered from,and by answers I mean genuine answers that clears all comprehensions.