Internet marketing specialist Intoweb Marketing recently hosted a successful event on search engine marketing at The Innovation Hub's Conference Venue.
Supported by Google South Africa, the event featured a keynote address by Stafford Masie, Country Manager for Google SA.
According to Intoweb Managing Director, Johann Nortj`e, the event was overwhelmingly well attended. He says there was massive interest from all over the country, with people from as far afield as Botswana in attendance.
Masie's presentation covered a number of topics, including search engine optimisation and the application and benefits of Google Adwords - two of Intoweb's primary service offerings.
Masie also detailed a few aspects of Google SA's immediate plans for the local market, the main focus of which is to improve search quality in the country. "Our aim is for the Google spider to catch every single piece of Web real estate in South Africa," he said.
A key element of this will entail interfacing with a number of search engine optimisation companies and doing more to educate people about the Google search engine, how to utilise it, and why search is so valuable.
Google SA will be looking at localising aspects around the rest of Google such as You Tube and Google Maps. A lot of work is also going into the building of human capacity and the necessary online capabilities to provide optimal search quality to South Africa.
Masie's presentation also touched briefly on broadband issues in the country. "I think that in the next 24 months, the situation is definitely going to get better and Google will lend a hand in every platform that we can participate in to demonstrate the value of broadband," he said.
With the use of mobile phones in South Africa and the rest of the world at its highest level ever, Masie stressed that the mobile market is a particular area of interest for Google. He said this would be especially important in light of the fact that 78% of all cellphone users in South Africa do not own a PC and over 85% will never own one in their lifetime. These figures could probably also be a contributing factor to another statistic which states that South Africa is the third largest country in the world in terms of the volume of mobile Google searches.
Masie's presentation continued with a discussion of the variety of elements of Google that are in place to enhance their fundamental objective, which is to "organise all of the world's information and make it universally accessible" - from Google Enterprise and Adwords, to You Tube, Adsense and Google Co-op. All of these elements take their place within Google's three-spoke model which connects users, advertisers and publishers.
As a specialist in Google tools and platforms, Nortj`e says Intoweb was very fortunate to have secured Masie as a speaker. "Google South Africa has not even fully launched yet. They are still busy recruiting people and setting themselves up, so we were extremely lucky to have gotten Stafford Masie to contribute some of his time," he says. According to him, the power of the Internet is revolutionising the way people and companies are marketing themselves. "Google provide this wonderful platform, but they can not market you. That's where we come in - it is important to have companies like Intoweb Marketing who can help people to market themselves effectively on the Internet," he said.
According to him, the South African market has clearly woken up to the idea of the benefits of Internet marketing. "The objective for us with this event was to get people excited about the Internet, and help them understand that this is big. It can make or break you, because your competitors are already gearing themselves for this revolution. At the same time we wanted to send the message that one needs to do it right. We are very happy that Google SA came on board to help demonstrate that," he concludes.
For more information on Intoweb, visit www.intowebmarketing.com or e-mail info@intowebmarketing.com.
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