An increase in the reliance and trust of search marketing techniques will see online marketers spend more in the area, according to new research.

Internet Retailer questioned 245 online marketing professionals and found that most are allocating an increasing amount towards paid and natural search marketing.

According to their statistics, 30 per cent of respondents claimed search engine optimization is responsible for 50 per cent of sales.  And 82.8 per cent revealed that they were not planning to reduce the amount they were currently spending on the medium.

Greg Jarboe, from SEMPO  added that businesses should be targeting the area on various fronts.

"Seventy per cent of all traffic is generated by natural search and 30 per cent by pay-per-click so retailers should be doing multiple things to get better natural results,"

If you are in the UK and need a reference point keep an eye out for the 'UK Search Engine Marketing Benchmark Report' in conjunction with e-consultancy appearing tomorrow that concurs with these findings ;-)

Meanwhile, AOL has recently revealed plans to allow companies to directly contact them in order to run ads on their search engine service. I remember when they used to this back in the day with their AOL keywords but you had to phone up and haggle with them over the price, I wonder if it has improved since back then?