In this tough economy, many marketers are looking for ways to maximize their decreasing budgets. Some even reduce their advertising during economic downturns, resulting in long-term loss of market share and reduced brand recognition. A great way to maintain traffic to your website and preserve your online brand awareness at a relatively low cost is search engine optimization (SEO). There are minimal upfront and maintenance costs associated with SEO, yet the possibility of long lasting ROI.The goal is to achieve first-page rankings on the major search engines’ organic listings (non-paid listings). This can drastically boost online impressions and traffic to your site, without paying the cost-per-click (CPC) charge of paid search. Organic traffic also helps reduce your overall online CPC and CPS (cost per sale) if you are running traditional paid search campaigns.SEO only requires a small portion of your total online budget and can generate similar levels of targeted traffic to your site, when compared to paid search. If your website is able to obtain a first-page paid search and organic search ranking, you can reduce the number of competitor links and increase your chance of receiving clicks.When reviewing your budgets for 2009, keep SEO — one of the most cost-effective and long-lasting online tactics — in mind.