Many marketers believe that if you don’t exist in the search engines you don’t exist at all, this may have 
some truth to it. However, little is ever said about existing in the minds of the target audience before they even contemplate the search engines. Would this not be far more beneficial? Firstly build the trust and awareness in the potential client/customer then utilise the search engines to ensure your brand is found.
Search engine optimisation, and pay per click, create a solid foundation to market any website, however, you must look beyond it to truly get the best results possible. By integrating search engine optimisation into an online marketing campaign you are ensuring that not only is the customer/client aware of the brand prior to the search, they will find it easily in the search engines, recognise it and thus select it.
As with more traditional methods online marketing has long term benefits such as increasing brand awareness and engaging the target market. Email marketing, PR, banner advertisement and viral marketing are various methods employed in an online marketing campaign; all of which have the potential to create a buzz about your brand and create inbound links to your website, the latter of course having a very positive effect upon your search engine optimisation campaign.
The integration of search engine optimisation, however, should not stop with online marketing. There is nothing preventing it from becoming an integral part of traditional marketing methods. Several multinational companies have integrated search into large scale advertising campaigns encouraging customers to search targeted keywords, for example Orange; this enables them to utilise a pre exisiting relationship to strengthen search effort and their online profile. Further to this upon being exposed to traditional marketing methods audience members do not act immediatly, having some form of invitation to search or direction to the website gives greater reason for them to take action. Having said this, many companies are not even marketing their company website on the most basic of levels, many are still failing to include their web address in televised and print advertisements.
There is a long way to go before companies are fully utilising search engine optimisation across multiple channels, however, the amalgamation of online search marketing and traditional marketing methods is immenent.
As one company who utilises multi level marketing might say:
“The future’s bright, the future is search”
