SEM includes using AdWords, website content and performance, and social marketing, more commonly known as blogging, to increase the likelihood your site will be seen and clicked on during a Google or Bing search.
Recent trends have shown building and maintaining a website is only half of the battle. Making sure it’s discovered and optimized to capture the customer is equally important. These more recent statistics will give you a broad industry perspective:
Search and shopping: 44 percent of online shoppers begin by using a search engine
U.S. searches: 12 billion searches per month on the Web
Website content volume: Business websites with more than 400 pages get six times more leads than those with 51–100 pages
Search/sales cycle: 86 percent of consumers say using a search engine allowed them to learn something new or important that helped them increase their knowledge and willingness to buy
SEO close rate: SEO leads have a 14.6 percent close rate, while direct mail and print advertising have a 1.7 percent close rate
Paid search: The use of AdWords by advertisers grew 26 percent in the 1Q15 and 22 percent in the 2Q15
Local search on smartphones: Ad spending will rise 56 percent this year to $6.7 billion
Mobile e-commerce: Total mobile sales in the U.S. reached $114 billion in 2014 (up 58.3 percent from 2013) and are expected to reach $293 billion in 2018, a compound annual growth rate of about 27 percent
Internet and TV advertising: Worldwide TV advertising will grow modestly to $214 billion in 2018, while Internet advertising will advance to $194 billion
Blog post length: If a post is greater than 1,500 words, it will receive 68 percent more tweets and 22 percent more Facebook likes than shorter posts
Top of Google search: If your website is in the top three search results, there is a 60 percent chance it will be clicked on
About the tech translator
Clint Parr has lived in the digital communications industry for more than 20 years as a tech CEO, COO, marketer, salesman, consultant and entrepreneur. He currently is a Partner and CMO at liquidfish, a leading digital marketing and custom development company. He recognizes that technology can be overwhelmingly complicated, especially in the website and mobile applications industry, and someone needs to simplify it for decision makers.