Online Marketing

How to Increase International Sales with Search Engine Optimisation

Seminar paper from the year 2010 in the subject Business economics - Marketing, Corporate Communication, CRM, Market Research, Social Media, grade: 8 (Niederlande), Fontys University of Applied Sciences Venlo, language: English, abstract: The main problems 'how to optimise a website?'; 'what is the potential of search engine marketing according to international sales increase?' and 'for whom is an investment in search engine marketing advisable?' have been solved in this report. All important factors which have to be considered when optimising a website have been explained and rounded off with concise examples. The report focused on the subarea of online marketing 'search engine marketing (SEM)'. SEM embraces search engine optimisation (SEO) methods and pay per click (PPC). The difference between these methods is that SEO covers lots of measures which can be influenced directly by a company to improve the ranking result of its homepage without spending money. PPC in contrast is rather similar to conventional advertising and does cost money at the moment a person clicks on this advert. Nevertheless an optimal output can only be achieved by carrying out SEO measures and PPC advertising. PPC adverts can also be used to test keywords before starting to optimise a website, so only ideal keywords then can be optimised which lead to the best SEO results. PPC adverts are also a good changeover which can be used until the SEO measures are successful and the homepage is listed on the upper organic results. Surveys regarding to the use and accessibility of the internet within the EU showed that the medium internet has developed as the second most commonly used retail channel within the EU. 65 % of the European population has an internet access and 73 % of the 16 to 24 year old population uses the internet daily or almost daily. More than the half of the Europeans uses the internet for finding information about goods and services for private purpose. More than every second person in Denmark, the UK, Netherland, Germany, Sweden and Finland ordered goods or services for private use in 2008. Those goods and services are mostly travel and holiday accommodations (> 50 %) and clothes and sports goods. That shows that SEM has a great potential for international sales increase. Especially countries with a high population offer as optimal target countries. Companies that sells goods which can be traded within the European Union without any problems and that employs staff that speaks the target areas language have a high potential to increase their sales by implementing SEM. Due to the page limit a detailed and all-embracing report was not possible.