It is predicted that by 2008, Internet purchases will top $230 billion and account for a hefty 10% of all U.S. retail sales. Millions of consumers research online before purchasing at traditional retail stores.

To maximize your sales during the all-important holiday season, now is the time to get serious about your search engine marketing.

Most online holiday shoppers start by entering keywords into their favorite search engine to find what they are looking for. Your mission is to attract those shoppers to your Web site and keep them there until they have completed their purchase from you.

Many businesses waste time and money seeking volume rather than value in their search engine marketing. Although it may make you feel good to have a huge number of visitors to your Web site, if no one is buying from you, then your search engine marketing campaign is not of much value.

Businesses that not only want to be the ones picked from the list of search results, but that want to convert those clicks into new customers this holiday season must understand the value of a keyword click when applied to an acquisition conversion rate. From keyword click to purchase and new account, the best Internet marketing campaigns maximize a company?s online search marketing investment with effective strategy, appropriate tactics and meaningful measurements.

The key is to understand the metrics involved.

Metrics are benchmarks and figures which provide a measure of effectiveness ? what we put into search engine marketing versus what we get out of it. Click-through rate is a common metric that measures how many people have clicked on a search listing to visit your Web site. Cost per account, cost per lead and cost per visitor are all cost metrics that may be used, depending on what your marketing objectives are, as well as what type of campaign you?re launching.

Regardless of what metrics you use, the value of search engine marketing lies in the number of visitors that accept an offer, apply for an account, buy a product, or employ your services this holiday season.

Take the time to plan an effective search engine marketing campaign, or seek assistance from an experienced Internet marketing agency to improve the odds of having the right people quickly find you. Whether you rely on free organic search listings or paid placements with pay-per-click keywords, the goal is to convert visitors to sales maximizing your investment.

Here are some ways you can make your search engine marketing more effective this holiday season:

Plan - Select targeted keywords for your target audience with each of your products and services that direct the searcher directly to that product or service on your site as opposed to the homepage. If you are trying to bring searchers to a traditional retail store, target the geography within a reasonable driving distance of your store.

Analyze - Track where your customers are coming from. Analyze the effectiveness of specific keywords and identify the most profitable ones. Compare what you are investing to the results of your campaign.

Adjust - Use this information adjust your focus to what's delivering the highest return on investment. Delete keywords that aren't working.