The company, which pioneered online insurance shopping, uses the power of search engines like Google to attract consumers, both through paid advertising and ‘organic’ search results.
Organic search results differ from paid advertising in that the results are sorted by the search engine and ranked based on the relevancy to the user’s keywords. Given that 80% of web traffic now comes from search engines, using them is an important move for online advertisers.
With users of search engines looking at the results for an average of seven seconds before making a click decision, companies are under pressure to maintain high search engine rankings. Consequently, companies like InsureMe, are adopting a method called search engine optimization (SEO) to keep their web pages relevant to their targeted consumers.
In combination with SEO, paid advertising on search engines, also known as pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, is growing amid businesses and their affiliates that advertise on the Web.
PPC advertisements are positioned in search engines by advertisers who anticipate a consumer’s interest in their products, based on the words used their search.
InsureMe’s affiliate manager Jack Boulant explained the advantage of the coexistence of PPC and SEO, The combination of PPC ads and SEO efforts present the consumer with multiple sites to shop and educate themselves on products like insurance.
With the increasing popularity of online shopping, it is inevitable that PPC and SEO processes will grow, encouraging increased competition between online advertisers, both for priority listing in the search results and consumer interest. Whereas advertisers might once have competed across space in printed publications, the competition seems set to continue across cyberspace.
