Search Engine Optimization

The top benefits of social media marketing are increased exposure (89%) and increased traffic (75%), finds Social Media Examiner in its annual "Social Media Marketing Industry Report" [download page], which surveyed more than 3,000 marketers on their social media activities. A majority also report benefits such as developing loyal fans (65%), lead generation (61%), and improved search rankings (58%), but only 43% say their efforts have boosted sales. Nevertheless, study results indicate that for those willing to take the time, sales will follow. Read more »

79% of smartphone owners qualify as "smartphone shoppers," says Google in new study results, using their devices to assist with shopping at least once a month. 84% of these smartphone shoppers use their devices to help them while they're in a store, equating to about 2 in 3 smartphone owners overall using their devices in-store. The most common way these consumers go about their research is through search, per the study, with store and brand websites less popular. That pattern also applies when smartphone owners compare prices, discover promotional offers, and find out where products are sold Read more »

75% of ad agencies responding to a BrightRoll survey believe that video is equally or more effective than TV, and that's up from 64% who believed that to be the case in last year's survey, according to a new BrightRoll report [download page]. Even more respondents (91%) believe that digital video measures up well with display, although they're less convinced about its effectiveness compared to social media (68%), search (52%) and direct response (45%). The most important aspect of video advertising to clients is its targeting capabilities, according to 45% of respondents, with reach (27%) also valuable. Read more »

Perhaps due to the growing influence of social shares on search rankings, local SEOs are increasingly seeing social media as an effective marketing channel for local businesses, according to results from a BrightLocal industry survey. More than 8 in 10 respondents believe that social either works well for certain business types (57%) or that it is very powerful (25%), up from 76% last year, while fewer than 1 in 10 are of the opinion that it's over-hyped. When it comes to generating leads customers for clients, though, SEOs are biased towards search, with 82% saying that "general search" is one of their top-3 most effective online channels. Read more »

31% of search marketers believe that social sharing of content will be a much more important means to improve rank this year than last, and another 49% believe it will be more important, according to results from the BrightEdge "2013 Search Marketer Survey" [download page]. None of the respondents believe social signals will decrease in importance - instead they recognize that understanding the correlation between social sharing of their pages and rank for these pages will only increase in importance, with 80% seeing this as either much more (33%) or more (47%) important this year. Read more »

Google has released a customer journey to online purchase benchmark tool, providing insights as to where different marketing channels impact the customer journey. Based on transactional data collected from Google Analytics accounts with e-commerce tracking enabled, the tool reveals that in the US, display, social and email each act more as an assist interaction, while paid search acts almost equally as an assist and last interaction. Read more »

HubSpot has released its "2013 State of Inbound Marketing report" [download page], with a host of statistics covering adoption and use of inbound marketing tools. Among the insights from the survey, 27% of marketers report below-average costs per lead (CPLs) for both email marketing and social media, with SEO and blogs close behind (25% and 24%, respectively). When looking at lead conversion rates by channel, 15% of respondents say SEO delivers above-average sales conversions, with social (13%) next on the list. Read more »

Smartphone and tablet owners just can't seem to let go of their devices. Young smartphone owners seem particularly addicted: 3 in 4 check them when they wake up in the morning, while up to 40% check them every 10 minutes. As it turns out, even a vacation won't pry smart devices out of their owners' hands. When they go on vacation, 8 in 10 owners say they take their devices along and use them all the time, compared to slightly more than 1 in 10 who take them but rarely use them. Read more »

A survey of 1,497 smartphone owners, conducted by Chadwick Martin Bailey (CMB) and SinglePlatform at Constant Contact, reveals that respondents are more likely to search for restaurants than any other industry. The results align with prior research from YP showing that restaurants are the most queried, clicked, and called mobile local search category. Overall, the CMB and SinglePlatform study found that in the previous 6 months, 81% of respondents had searched for a restaurant via a mobile application, and 92% through a web browser. Read more »

Tablets and smartphones combined accounted for roughly 24% of organic search visits in Q1, according to [download page] the latest quarterly report from RKG. Android devices contributed about 7% of visits, far behind the 17% combined share delivered by iOS devices (iPad: 9%; iPhone: 8%). As has been the case for several quarters now, Google took the lead in share of visits from mobile devices (at about 27%), followed by Yahoo (23%) and Bing (8%). The Google share includes estimated visits from iOS 6. Read more »