Impact of Search Engine Optimization as a Marketing Tool

Abstract

Today’s world revolves around information that is the driving force behind any economic value chain. The thirst for information has led to the evolution of online “Search Engines” over last few years and are the most widely used instruments currently. Gradually marketers also started using this platform for marketing their products. This study focuses on the impact of search engine optimization as a marketing tool and its influence on various marketing variables like market share, brand equity and others. Literature review highlights many marketing variables getting affected by search engine optimization. Variables like market share, brand loyalty, brand recognition, product price, product information, brand image, brand awareness, consumer online behavior, and user reviews are few of them. The authors have found that most of the researches have highlighted these variables either in isolation or may be in combination of few. Few studies have considered variables only from marketer’s point of view and others from buyer’s point of view. In this study, the authors have attempted to comprehend and understand empirically, the impact of search engine optimization on various marketing variables identified (after the study) as market share and brand equity as the most prominent ones and product awareness, purchase persuasion and consumer insights the other important ones. To analyze the said phenomenon, the initial step was the examination of the significant writing to develop a comprehension about different parameters of search engine for the brand post. The data were gathered through questionnaire from the sample of 338 respondents who were selected by simple random sampling method mostly from the National Capital Region (NCR) of Delhi in India. The data collected from the respondents were loaded on SAS base for exploratory factor analysis and multiple regression analysis.