Content development, graphic and website design, internal communication, social media management, public relations, marketing, crisis communications, event management, video production…
With limited resources and competing demands within a typical marketing and communications team, people often ask, “why should I care about search engine optimization (SEO)?”
I’ll tell you why.
There are 100 Billion+ Google Searches Every Month
And 70% of search engine visitors rely on organic search results (SEO) to find what they’re looking for; only 30% of users click on pay-per-click ads (PPC). Of those 100 billion searches each month:
- 33% of clicks go to 1st organic result
- 60% of clicks go to top 3 organic results
If you haven’t implemented a strategic SEO plan on your website (and its related digital properties), you’re likely not going to rank or be found among those top search results – especially if your competitors have.
A higher search result position translates to a higher click-through rate (CTR). Your goal is to rank within the first one to three pages of search results for as many of your targeted keyword terms as possible, striving, of course, for ranking at the top of page one.
That’s not to say that ranking well on subsequent pages isn’t still of value. Even landing on page two or three may bring relevant clicks to your site.
Google, and Bing, and Yahoo! Oh My!
Users have a variety of choices when it comes to search engines. These are the top search engines (desktop only) in order of popularity:
- Google: 68%
- Bing: 18%
- Yahoo: 10%
- Ask: 2%
- AOL: 1%
Although we certainly don’t want to ignore the guidelines of any of the top search engines when developing your SEO strategy, we would miss a huge opportunity by not using Google as our primary guide given the large portion of the search market share it holds (68%!). Luckily, many of the top best practices are applicable across the board among the various search engines.
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