SEO in New Zealand
Search Engine Optimisation popularly shortened as SEO is an integral part of the search engine. It has been around for a long-time since the 1990s when “Archie search,” the first search engine was launched. Archie search was simple even for a beginner online marketer to grasp since it only considered website title tags.
The first proper search engines came in 1994 and 1995 with Altavista and Yahoo respectively. However, in the case of Yahoo’s rankings, they were done manually by people, and once digital marketers pay money, their website will appear at the top.
Google also started in 1996 through a university project, it later became Ask in 1997 and MSN in 1998. The change was gradual and intentional until it became what it is now. The present state of SEO will be extensively discussed in this article as you read on.
The present state of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
Investment in Digital marketing is not new any longer; it is, in fact, the largest channel. Online marketing makes over 50% of all advertising expenditure in the UK. This is true, massive. The United Kingdom is ranked as the leader in online marketing; and bringing home to New Zealand, we can say we haven’t gone so far with digital sitting with a 32% rating in total advertising spend.
Although we aren’t world leaders, companies in New Zealand still make lots of investments worth millions of dollars in the digital sphere, and with 55% of the spend channelled to search advertising, it accounts for the right segment of Kiwi companies’ advertising investment.
Google AdWords has penetrated New Zealand and has since been by SMEs. A good percentage of these SMEs have been channelled to online marketing by big groups like Ora, Saturn 6, Yellow, Reach Local and the likes.
Big organisations have made investments in SEO for a couple of years now, either by giving the task to marketing resources in-house or outsourcing to search marketing agencies. With in-house SEO, there’s almost no rush hour, as there is no big hurdle. The outcome is that SEO often gets pushed aside to the “I’ll do it later list”, as more significant marketing challenges are tackled first, and like you know, tomorrow may never come.
SEO investment has become mainstream
In the last couple of years, small businesses in New Zealand have started investing in SEO, which is a worthwhile investment to place the top in the search result and increase their presence. Although the adoption of SEO as an investment in marketing has been on the rise, smaller businesses still have opportunities to improve their activities in SEO.
Most of them focus only on on-page optimisation and SEO. They need to diversify in other SEO strategies such as technical SEO, content creation, on-page optimisation and outreach to third parties.
Most in-house resources may not be specialists in SEO, as on-page and local SEO being within their powers but often have limited understanding in other areas. SEO involves lots of skills and specialties; effective strategies should be put in place to ensure excellent results.
Conclusion
The importance of SEO in digital marketing cannot be overemphasised, as it is integral for enhancing website visibility. Link building is also crucial to SEO. Businesses in New Zealand should pay close attention to SEO to improve their Google search results.
