Is SEO Your Bottom Line Or A Sideline Activity?

Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Tuesday, November 3, 2009 Comments (6)

Different online marketers achieve success in different ways. But I’d be willing to bet that most of the ones who hit it big do so by using search engine optimization as a primary internet marketing tool to drive targeted visitors that lead to sales. Why did I come to that conclusion?

Besides having been in the internet marketing industry for 12 years, I have seen almost everything (believe me NOTHING surprises me at all! Also, social media marketing is still struggling and learning to find its groove with companies from a marketing perspective. A recent survey by CitiBank and GfK Roper reveals that most small business owners don’t rely on social media (in fact 63% of all small businesses surveyed said that the social networking component of social media marketing was not helpful at all!). As a result they get more sales and leads out of their own websites and search engine optimziation efforts. Even without that survey, however, I’d still say the same thing.

Most people, even today, if they want to find information, go to one of the search engines. A few people Twitter a question or head to Yahoo! Answers. But most of them will still attempt to search through one of the search engines. If they don’t succeed in getting the answer to their question on the first search query, they’ll send another query. The same search with a twist.

In other words, search is still the major factor in website success. A few years ago, no matter which website you were looking at, about 80% of the traffic was coming from a search engine – and most of that from Google. In fact, I think at one time about 80% of all Web traffic came from Google. Now it’s probably around the 70% range. The other 30% comes from various social media websites and third-party referrers.

This tells me that you can’t really succeed online without search engine traffic. Most social media traffic still doesn’t convert. That is, a low percentage of social media traffic converts compared to a higher percentage for search engine traffic, which includes organic search and paid search.

That’s why I think online marketers who make SEO a major factor in their online marketing campaigns will do better than marketers who make SEO a sideline activity. Which one are you?

Comments (6) Category: SEO

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6 Comments

Comment by Johan Rijk

Made Wednesday, 4 of November , 2009 at 4:46 pm

I believe the conversion rates for social media networks will go up and get better. One of the problems is that there is a lot of conflicting data. Yes SEO has been and will continue to be effective in generating leads and sales, but there are many different areas of social media networking, and with Facebook and Twitter as big as they are today on the web, social media marketing and networking conversion rate percentages can only rise. Five years ago social media like Facebook and Twitter hardly existed not to mention generating anything for online business but today this is no longer the case. Having said that I will say again SEO is still effective but SEO as well has many pieces that need to be put together correctly in order to be successful.

Comment by Nick Stamoulis

Made Wednesday, 4 of November , 2009 at 5:48 pm

Hi Johan,
Thanks for the comment and excellent points. Very true SEO does indeed require sometimes for all of the stars to align to work excellent for competitive markets

Comment by MikeY

Made Wednesday, 4 of November , 2009 at 8:18 pm

I think the time now says SEO work makes the biggest impact in driving traffic to a site. This includes on- and off-page SEO work, of course. We’ll just have to monitor events and trends as they happen to see what the future brings.

Comment by Nick Stamoulis

Made Wednesday, 4 of November , 2009 at 10:09 pm

Thanks for the comment MikeY, very true indeed!

Comment by RAMSES II

Made Saturday, 7 of November , 2009 at 7:25 pm

SEO is definately the way to go to achieve sales. The faster people realize that the better off they will be.
My problem is that SEO has become such a over rated word.
People think if they have web site that is SEO, they are sooo wrong.
It is soo much more than that.
Unfortunately right now i don’t have time to elaborate.
The author Nick seems to be on the right page though.
Good luck all.

Comment by Nick Stamoulis

Made Saturday, 7 of November , 2009 at 10:10 pm

Hi RAMSES II,
Thanks for the comment and your kind words!