Internet marketing: the myths and the reality

Over the last decade, it has become clear that for nearly every business of any size and type – be it business-to-business (B2B), business-to-customer (B2C), global or local – internet marketing is likely to be its most critical IT investment.

Whether you keep internet marketing in-house or outsource it in toto or something in between, your business survival is closely intertwined with your internet marketing programmes. A business owner can no longer afford to remain illiterate about how today's search engines really work. In my experience, here is where people go wrong:

Every week I seem to speak to one or more business owners or marketing
directors who tell me that their business does very well in search engine rankings - they check by ''googling'' their keywords and invariably find their company on the first page.

These business owners or marketing people are making a big mistake. They fail to realise that the search engines learn your personal preferences (personalized search ) and they try to display your preferred sites on the first page of what you seek.

The search engines also favour local companies (localized search), so you are far more likely to find your company on that first page than a key competitor from afar.

There are math-based search engine optimisation tools that allow your copywriters to overcome these obstacles. They begin by giving you real information on your site's rankings.