You have heard the term SEO thrown around a lot in the recent past and still today. But many business owners really don’t know what it means…
SEO means Search Engine Optimization. This is the ‘nerdy stuff’ your web development or marketing team needs to do to your website so that when people are online searching for your product or service, they actually find you. Why does your online presence matter? Check out some of the stats we pulled on online usage.
- 61% of global Internet users research products online.
(Interconnected World: Shopping and Personal Finance, 2012) - 44% of online shoppers begin by using a search engine.
(Interconnected World: Shopping and Personal Finance, 2012) - On average, we conduct 12 billion searches per month on the web in the United States. (Comscore, July 2014)
- The average click-through rate for paid search in 2010 (worldwide) was 2%. (Convario, January 2011)
- Businesses with websites of 401-1000 pages get 6x more leads than those with 51-100 pages. (HubSpot Lead Generation Lessons from 4,000 Businesses, 2011)
- 86% of consumers stated that using a search engine allowed them to learn something new or important that helped him/her increase his/her knowledge. (Pew Research Center, Search Engine Use 2012)
But how does it work? Can’t I just insert a bunch of keywords in and hope I get found in a few months?
NO that’s how it used to work (sort of), Google has gotten very smart and changes the way it ind your site. It uses a formula called an algorithm to decide who is worth finding. Although many internet marketers claim they know the secret, Google would beg to differ… Our sources tell us they change that algorithm dozens of time every single day! So it takes a team of experts to collaborate and keep up to Google.
- The average content length for a web page that ranks in the top 10 results for any keyword on Google has at least 2,000 words. The higher up you go on the search listings page, the more content each web page has. (QuickSprout)
- If a post is greater than 1,500 words, on average it receives 68.1% more tweets and 22.6% more Facebook likes than a post that is under 1,500 words. (QuickSprout)
- 60% of all organic clicks go to the organic top 3 search results. (Business2Community)
- YouTube has become the 2nd Largest Search Engine – bigger than Bing, Yahoo, Ask & AOL combined. (Social Media Today) Pretty sure they are number 1 now at the time of this posting!
- 50% of all mobile searches are conducted in hopes of finding local results, and 61% of those searches result in a purchase. (Search Engine Watch)
- SEO leads have a 14.6% close rate, while outbound leads (such as direct mail or print advertising) have a 1.7% close rate. (Search Engine Journal)
Stats provided by Hubspot.
So what’s the moral of this blog story? You can no longer do this yourself and expect it to be effective, unless you happen to be an internet marketer and have horrendous amounts of time on your hands. If it’s important to your business to be found online, like most, connect with us today and tell us what your needs are. We’ll steer you in the right direction and actually make it work for you!