NI seminar advises on how to maximise internet traffic

An Invest Northern Ireland seminar being held today to advise local businesses on driving internet traffic to their websites has attracted so much interest that it is being simultaneously broadcast over the internet.

The half-day seminar features some of the leading players in the internet search engine world including Bryan Schreier of Google, Daniel Mohacek of Overture and local expert Barry Lloyd of makemetop.com.

Over 350 business people attended the seminar, opened by Leslie Morrison, chief executive of Invest NI.

He said it was an exciting event which simultaneously advised business about successful internet marketing strategies and showed the power of the internet in operation as the event was web cast.

“With the internet, Northern Ireland companies no longer have to suffer the problem of peripherality and can actively compete in the global marketplace,” he said.

But he said that with over eight billion websites it was easy to see why competition to get top listings in the search engines was fierce.

“Search engines are responsible for driving over 70% of traffic to websites so their importance cannot be overstated.

“Every month over 150 million people use search engines to find products and services on the internet, so companies that know how to make search engines work for them have a huge market advantage,” said Mr Morrison.