Online marketing has taken advertising to a whole new level. The online directory has replaced the telephone book. Your business advertisement will no longer disappear along with the newspaper but will instead be available online 24/7 to potential customers on the other side of the ocean.

It hasn’t always been this easy, however, and especially not in South Africa, where growth in the Internet occurs at a much slower pace than other more technologically-advanced countries.

Internet marketer, Derek Robson wrote an article in 2007 titled “Internet Marketing in South Africa”, in which he discusses the problems facing South African-based internet marketers. In the article, he states, “we [South Africa] are seriously lacking in internet technology” and he goes on to talk about problems internet marketers of the time were facing:

“As the internet is still relatively new to South Africa, we don’t have many experts or experience in the field. Those calling themselves experts, have limited knowledge and are too expensive, when compared to overseas competitors. Simple things like service provision, web hosting, design and site building, software, tools, optimization and advertising, are grossly overpriced. In most cases, they are bought overseas and resold here… There are no local, South African internet companies, for memberships, product sourcing, resources, search engine optimization etc, so we have to look abroad.”

Robson also discusses how the state-owned telecommunications company, Telkom, has the monopoly, leading to “very highly priced access and an indifferent service.” He compares South Africa’s internet coverage to that of the United Sates, referencing a small population of South Africans who have any form of access to the Internet and he says that this is largely due to the high costs.

We’re not in 2007 anymore…

In the years since Robson wrote this article, it is obvious that times have changed. A recent study conducted by World Wide Worx in collaboration with Cisco Internet Business Solutions Group tells us just how much.

The study states that the number of South African internet users has passed the 5 million mark for the first time. The number of internet users rose from 5.3 million to 5.6 million last year and a similar growth rate is expected to occur this year. World Wide Worx MD, Arthur Goldstruck, said that South Africa will continue to see strong growth in 2010, stating that we should reach the 6 million mark by the end of the year. According to the research organisation, one of the factors behind this growth is the landing of the new undersea cable on the South African coast.

This recent development will cause operators to begin to leverage the combination of undersea cable capacity and new fibre-optic networks to supply corporate clients and resellers with bigger, faster and more flexible capacity. Says Reshaad Sha, Senior Manager for Cisco, “The year ahead will see the proliferation of high speed connectivity materialising more widely than ever before.”

No longer do we live in a country where the state-owned telecommunications company has the monopoly. Instead, this new development will spark an 18% increase in the number of Internet access and service providers in South Africa.

More internet = more internet marketing

This rise in internet usage is synonymous with a rise in online marketing. South African internet marketing service provider, eTraffic states in an article on their website that there are a multitude of internet marketing strategies which can provide companies with great advertising for a much lower price and for proven better results. The article goes on to mention that search engine optimisation is one of these strategies.

The rate at which the Internet has advanced is pretty incredible and thus we are able to conduct online marketing campaigns that are lot more sophisticated than they have been previously.

However, one cannot deny that we are still behind “so called first world countries,” as Robson calls them, and still have catching up to do. Therefore I think it is imperative that we examine the trends and developments of internet marketing strategies in these countries and take notice of what internet users are searching for, i.e. what tools are growing in popularity?

SEO specialists, 1st Place, in an article titled “SEO for small businesses in South Africa” state that “SEO is ranked as one of the top ROI [Return of Investment] solutions”.

Of course SEO isn’t the only channel companies can use in their online marketing campaigns. PPC (pay per click) advertising is another popular form of internet marketing. Some companies might choose to conduct a social media campaign, but this cannot be measured as well as methods like SEO and PPC.

What are Americans searching for?

As I believe SEO and PPC are the most popular strategies used in internet marketing, I’d like to:

A – compare the popularity of the keyword ‘SEO’ as a search word versus that of ‘PPC’ in South Africa and;

B – compare the popularity of the keyword ‘SEO’ as a search word versus that of ‘PPC’ in the US and;

C – compare these two results to each other.

To do this, I have used Google Insights and searched for the terms; ‘internet marketing’, ‘online marketing’, ‘SEO’ and ‘PPC’. I have chosen to look for results between January 2007 and May 2010 and only in South Africa. This is what we see:

The South African graph looks rather sporadic and, although there are short periods where SEO slightly overtook PPC in terms of interest, PPC is more popular as a search term than SEO for the most part. For the second part of my investigation, I used the same keywords and time period but made the search specific to the United States. These are the results:

There is a steady rise in the interest in SEO as a search term and around March 2008, internet users in the US began searching for SEO more than they were searching for PPC.

From these results, if we are to look at the US as a trend-setter, then it is very possible that SEO may very well be the future of online marketing.

US company, USA SEO PROS, state on their website under the subheading “Consumers do not want paid advertising” that consumers want real, organic results and that they’ll find those within the regular, search listings. Also on their homepage do they state “Recent studies have shown that consumers are about 12 times more likely to buy your products and services after finding your site through organic search engine results than all other methods of advertising.”

It is without a doubt that SEO is a growing industry and that its potential as an internet marketing strategy shouldn’t be ignored. If SEO is increasingly gaining more popularity in the US, then I think it’s advisable that South African business owners get their foot in the door now so they can get ahead of the competition and gain market share online.