This morning I was reading Is Search Still Worth It? on eMarketer, which refers to the new Search Marketing Benchmark Guide 2008 by MarketingSherpa. It quotes some interesting statistics, which are all taken from a survey of actual marketers. For instance it says the marketers they surveyed said they planned to increase their pay-per-click budgets by at least 11% in 2008.

Respondents also rated both PPC and search engine optimisation as effective search marketing tactics. SEO came is as the second most effective marketing tactic after house email marketing, with PPC coming a fairly close third.

This is good news for all of us, as it validates the fact that these online marketing methods are actually working for the companies on the ground, and highlights once again that SEO and PPC are on the agenda to increase website traffic for a lot more companies than they are at present.