Due to the rising costs of pay per click advertising, 2KO decided to investigate creating it`s own internal seo (search engine optimization) division. In the early years of its company history, 2KO realized that a strong internet presence was critical to a small business wishing to make an impact on a global scale. Thus a team was established by Barry Smith (MD of 2KO International) to research various ways of reaching prominent positions on the top search engines such as Google and Yahoo.
2KO was one of the very first South African companies to embrace pay per click technology and 2KO was immediately able to find position on the first page of Google, by paying for its presence on a ppc basis. In the first three months of advertising 2KO achieved a 600 fold return on advertising which was immediately measurable. However after a year or two other companies were catching on to this fantastic revenue source, and the pay per click market started to become very competitive. In early 2004, 2KO was paying up to R15 per click and with the increase in number of advertisers, this soon became unmanageable and was producing a poor ROI.
And so First Place www.1stplace.co.za was born. "There is a wealth of information available on the internet and much of it from free sources" says Smith. "By applying yourself to learning the art of seo, you can catapult your web site from oblivion into the top echelons" he says. First Place is an in-house seo team spearheaded by Smith which has learnt the art of seo and the success of 2KO`s web site speaks volumes. 2KO International is a small company in Hout Bay, Cape Town but it has a web site that outperforms many of the top companies which have revenues of millions of dollars and large staff contingents. A search for "mcse training" or "cisco training" on Google.com will show that First Place is doing it`s work very well indeed. By signing up for an overture on-line advertising campaign, one will note that some companies are paying up to R80 per click for a term such as "mcse training" and so not only is there a massive saving but also a top position. SEO is becoming more and more visible as more South African companies take their businesses online and it is bound to escalate for years to come as competition heats up for the few spaces available in the top 10 on Google, MSN or Yahoo.
Share
Editorial contacts