Wading through the minefield that is small business success can get rather confusing at times. What are the best options for success with regard to brand recognition and conversion rates? One of the proven long term weapons in the success of any business continues to be search engine optimization. In some recently published research, business software company, 99 Firms, assembled data from over fifty companies and found that the importance of SEO can never be ignored. The following is taken directly from their published research:
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If done right, SEO can drive a 14.6% conversion rate.
SEO is focused on attracting visitors that are actively searching for information about products or services, which makes it an excellent tactic for lead generation. Not surprisingly, the leads that come from SEO have a 14.6% average conversion rate. For comparison, traditional strategies like print ads and direct mail have a 1.7% average conversion rate.
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93% of online experiences begin with a search engine.
This is the most well-known, but we just had to include it to emphasize the importance of SEO. Getting more eyes on your website is extremely important, as almost all online experiences start with a search engine like Google, Bing, or Yahoo.
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75% of users don’t even scroll past the first page of the SERPs.
Recent SEO facts and figures reveal that the majority of users scan the first page of Google results quickly and never go past it. Additionally, it’s worth mentioning that 18% of organic clicks go to the page on the first position, 10% to the page on the second position and 7% of organic clicks go to the page on #3.
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50% of search queries consist of at least 4 words.
Search engine marketing stats show that half of the queries are long-tail keywords. That means that your user intent strategy has to discover and target these terms. Otherwise, you’re missing about 50% of your audience and potential leads.
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Search engines drive 10 times more traffic to shopping sites than social media.
Search engine traffic stats show that search is the dominant traffic source for shopping sites. In fact, shopping sites get ten times more traffic from search engines than from social media. Proper search engine optimization for ecommerce sites includes adding relevant keywords in the blog content and product descriptions, external links pointing to industry experts, a robust web of internal links, a solid backlink portfolio, and speed optimization.
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In 2020, there will be 221 million mobile phone search users in the US.
Americans are increasingly connected to the world of digital information while on the go. A growing share of Americans use smartphones to access the internet and one out of five adults access the internet only via smartphones. In 2014, the number of mobile search users in the US was 133.6 million, and in 2017 this number rose to 196.5 million. In 2019, this figure is projected to grow to 215.8 million and reach 221 million in 2020.
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Mobile-optimized sites are more trusted by 51% of consumers.
Having a mobile-friendly website is critical in 2019 because more than half of consumers don’t trust websites that aren’t optimized for mobile. They would simply avoid the companies who have a poor mobile website.
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By 2021, mobile is predicted to dominate online sales, driving 54% in sales.
Not having a website optimized for mobile devices will cause you loses now and even more in the future. Mobile ecommerce, or mcommerce, was responsible for 34.5% of total ecommerce sales in 2017. As this trend is rapidly growing, projections are that, by 2021, mobile ecommerce sales will be driving 54% of total mobile sales, which is over $659 billion.
-Written by Kevin Sawyer
SearchPro Systems
2024