Every few weeks, I will share interesting research and statistics that may help validate the importance of investing the time and dollars into optimising your site. I meet so many people who think SEO is not a priority – my goal is to help you prove that it is.

Here goes…

According to internetnews.com, “Online Marketing Eats Into Traditional Media, ”

“Interactive marketing will near $55 billion and represent 21 percent of all marketing dollars spent in 2014 as advertisers shift money away from traditional media to search marketing, display advertising, e-mail marketing, social media and mobile promotions…”

This comes as no surprise, but it does prove that each of these elements (search, display, e-marketing, social media & mobile) are important, work together, and should be considered for every site/online strategy. The tools will change but tactics remain. Ask your SEO/Marketing specialist what will work best to attract the best leads for your business.

The post talks specifically about Search Marketing (my favourite):

“Search marketing continues to do well, in both adoption, today 80 percent of marketers use it, and money spent. “Search marketing accounts for 59 percent of the overall interactive pie. We project spend on paid listings, which includes paid inclusion, and search engine optimization (SEO) to grow at a CAGR of 15 percent, to $31 billion by 2014,” according to the report.”

This means it’s important to keep an eye out for relevant places to have your site listed. The key word is relevant – be careful when getting involved in a network that will list your site in all directories, not just ones that are pertinent for your business – especially if you are paying for the listing. Building a good reputation online is crucial and should be a priority to every SEO specialist.

This excellent article gives some pretty nitty gritty stats for SEO.  From intraspin.com, the post “10 statistics that demonstrate the value of SEO” reports this:

“77% of search users choose organic over paid listing when searching, 67% choose organic search when purchasing.”

More reason to ensure you are successfully optimising your site. But don’t just plow your key terms all over your home page. The Search Engines catch on and change their algorithms periodically. Refine your key terms (3 – 5 word phrases), refresh and add to your content, build your links internally and externally and figure out how you can better interact with your customers/prospects online.

One more stat from this post:

“When the searcher is purchasing, organic click-through generates 25% higher conversion rates than equivalent Pay-Per-Click (PP) click-through.”

Wow! Another reason to have someone (within your company or by using an SEO specialist) who is always keeping their eye on your site.

That’s it for now…I’ll keep digging and you keep reading!