There was a very interesting article posted in BusinessWeek online dated January 12, 2007. This article detailed a trend that is beginning to alter the way 1000’s of online advertisers are handling their business marketing for this upcoming new year.

It has been widely known by all of us in the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) business that the problems with any extended or stand alone PPC (Pay Per Click) effort were inevitable. With problems of click fraud and any business good or bad, being able to be #1 by just throwing more and more money at the market. Was a recipe for disaster.

The article detailed the experiences of a few large operations that spent over a million dollars for online ads only to have fewer sales this year than last. They detailed Jewelers, Luggage resellers, and an electronics supplier all experiencing similar stories. The good news for Utah search engine marketing is that this trend compels these companies to actually do some top level SEO and get their acts together. Has to be good for business on many levels.

The days of just bankrolling a PPC effort and standing back to collect checks seem to be going the way of the Atari and pong. The full article entitled “Small Fry Sour On Search Ads” can be read at Yahoo.