By the Numbers: Why SEO Isn’t Dead

With social media usage growing 356% in the past six years, companies are spending a lot more time crafting, cultivating, and fine-tuning their messages to reach target audiences on their social sites. Whether it’s to gain more followers, increase customer engagement, or boost sales, an effective social media strategy is critical to a business’ growth and success.

But what about search engine optimization (SEO) strategies? Are brands still leveraging the power of SEO to increase the discovery of their content through search engines? In general, should companies be betting on more than social?

Absolutely. Although social media marketing is exploding, SEO techniques remain highly relevant in 2016. In fact, search is still the leading referrer to the majority of websites. According to Kissmetrics, more people look for business through search than on social media. If your company neglects effective SEO strategies, you are leaving lots of leads, prospects, and money on the table.

If you’re still not convinced, read the below 16 stats, which prove that SEO is not dead and demonstrate how its application is vital to your digital marketing strategy. 1) 57% of B2B marketers confirm that SEO has the largest impact on their lead generation. (Source: NewsCred)

Looking to increase your lead flow? Strong SEO tactics gets the job done.

2) Search engines are the #1 source for content traffic generation, beating social media by more than 300%. (Source: IronPaper)

Don’t discount Google as a traffic play.

3) With projected mobile advertising increase to $28.48 billion, Google dominates with 35.17% of mobile ad revenue share, versus Facebook at 16.68% (Source: CMO Council)

Facebook has crushed their recent earning calls, but still only commands half of what Google does from marketing budgets.

4) When a post follows SEO best practices by exceeding 1,500 words, it receives 68.1% more tweets and 22.6% more Facebook likes, on average, than a post with fewer than 1,500 words. (Source: Hubspot)

Higher search engine rankings increase social shares, and vice versa.

5) Companies that blog regularly have 434% more indexed pages than companies who do not. (Source: Search Engine Land)

We can help you improve on this point—email us at [email protected] to chat.

6) 72% of consumers who did a local search visited a store within 5 miles. (Source: Wordstream)

Leveraging SEO and responsive web design is critical for brick-and-mortar businesses.

Local companies are missing out if their sites aren’t optimized for mobile.

8) 90% of B2B researchers online use search to look into business purchases. (Source: Google)

B2B marketers, take note.

9)  Research shows 89% of marketers worldwide rated SEO successful at achieving objectives: improved search rankings, website traffic, and lead generation. (Source:eMarketer)

If your end-goals include more traffic and leads, using current SEO practices can get you there.

10) 66% of B2B marketers are using search engine marketing (SEM), making it the most-used paid marketing strategy among B2B businesses. (Source: Content Marketing Institute)

Social still has ways to go in the paid B2B space.

11) Google gets over 100 billion searches a month. (Source: Mashable)

100. Billion. How many times do you Google something every day?

12) Google had 94% of the mobile (smartphone and tablet) search market share in December 2015. (Source: NetMarketshare)

That being said, make sure your site is Yahoo and Bing optimized, too.

13) Changing search algorithms (40%) and budget constraints (38%) are considered the most challenging obstacles to SEO success. (Source: Marketing Charts)

Like on social media, your search strategy needs to be dynamic and evolve with algorithm changes, user behavior, and marketing budgets.

14) More Google searches take place on mobile devices than computers in 10 countries, including the U.S. (Source: Google)

If you have an app, make sure you’re taking the time to implement SEO strategies there too.

15) 55% of B2B marketers state that SEM is their most effective paid advertising method. (Source: Content Marketing Institute)

There’s an inbound marketing advantage to search marketing that social can’t match yet.

Need help developing your SEO strategy? Email us at [email protected].