B2B Markeplace

It’s still a quite new invention, at least as a way for public use, but the net keeps making life an irritation. When the telephone came into general use, equipment was relatively expensive, getting connected took a considerable amount of time and the service was irregular at best. The phone took pride of place in the house – usually in the entrance hall so that people calling round would see that the house had one (and it almost always was just one).

In the 1990’s, it began to be possible to link up to what was called the Information Superhighway – a term that no one really understood, even those who made TV programmes about it, but it became common knowledge that there was a Thing that you could connect to if you had a telephone, a computer, a modem and an Internet Service Provider (ISP) such as Compuserve, AOL or Demon. In the first stages, the ISPs had their own platform upon which users could conduct their online business. It became possible to buy flowers from Interflora or a small number of collectables.But that was about it until the advent of the world wide web and organisations began to learn how to put their goods and services onto the net once it became easier to use credit cards.

Thus was Online Marketing born, as organisations wanted to find the best way to be noticed, get people to their site with a view to buying. A group of Californian students shut themselves away in a house and, assisted by Microsoft, tried to find out if it was possible to get everything they needed from the internet. It very nearly was, and while this was taking place, the word was that the complete method of doing business was altering. Professionals and other people who didn’t know raced to get in on the developments and identify those who were going to develop the way. It was eventually realised that all the net was ever going to be was a very clever outlet, albeit one with many of potential customers.

As the world settled down, the comprehension that the crucial thing to do was to get visitors looking to spend money on the site rather than try to change things altogether. Throughout this time, the primary search engines were Webcrawler, AltaVista and Yahoo. They were quite unsophisticated and output was haphazard. To get on them, you had to tell them you existed, they would analyse the site and catalogue it. The problem here, was that a large number had built up and the clients couldn’t keep up. But into the mix came Google offering very fast results and better geared towards accurate, pertinent searching. The engine was also the primary product, the cost covered by advertising and so Search Engine Placement became possible by paying for appropriate words to be displayed ahead of other results.

The technology continued and continues to develop so that now Online Marketing is a huge business and often a dark art as different tactics became possible. It was discovered that the search engines themselves could be used to give an advantage in getting a web site seen by helping them spot pertinent links, words and phrases which would marry up search requests with results. Thus Search Engine Optimisation has become a feasible option as an alternative to Search Engine Placement as it meant the searcher reviewing the site didn’t cost the host anything should the visit be a short one with no purchase involved.

As long as it done well, by a Website Optimization Company, it is an decent and cost effective way of getting a company’s online products and services noticed by users looking through search engines. It should cost no more than ‘pay per click’ advertising and users are often more likely to go to an ‘organic’ search result rather than an obviously sponsored one.