<|endoftext|>aholic study of 270 million site visits that shows natural search accounts for nearly half of all site visits, which is 5x more than all social visits combined.
Natural search visitors convert better, too. Hubspot��s data shows they have the best lead-to-customer close percentage of all channels:
Ignorant Boss:
��We��re Not A Big Brand, So We Have No Shot In The Search Rankings.��
Ann Thinks: If I see a dog, does that mean I am familiar with all the characteristics of a cat just because they both have four legs? Just because your past experience has been with marketing channels such as TV, where a massive marketing budget is the cost of admission, doesn��t mean it��s true for every other marketing channel.
Ann Says: It is a myth, albeit a persistent one, that you must be a massive company listed on every stock exchange with billions in annual revenue to make real headway in the search listings. The truth is, although brand recognition helps when it comes to building a robust link graph, search is the great equalizer with an open playing field to those organizations that choose to focus on it.
Take a look at this example SERP for a high volume keyword (��web hosting��). It shows how small- and medium-sized companies can do quite well in the SERPs. There are many such examples across industries.
Ignorant Boss:
��Why Don��t We Do Google Ads Instead? We Can Get Traffic Immediately Without All this SEO Business.��
Ann Thinks: Just because a 99-cent hamburger gives you immediate gratification doesn��t mean it��s in your long-term best interest.
Ann Says: Paid search ads will give you a more immediate return in some cases, but that is one of many factors to consider when considering investment in Paid vs. Natural search.
Consider the following factors:
Clicks take place in natural search: comScore data show that up to 92% of clicks take place in organic vs. paid search. Studies show a large part of this is because searchers are focused predominantly on the natural search results. This means a brand��s focusing on paid search means they are not appearing in the real estate where a majority of searcher attention is given.
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It Costs $$$ to Feed the Paid Search Machine: Paid search (as the name implies) is not free. It must be constantly fed money to continue producing results. (There��s a reason why Google generated nearly $50 Billion dollars in revenue last year.) Stop feeding the Paid Search machine , and it stops driving traffic. Contrast that with natural search — while it is not free and does require an often significant upfront investment, it is an ongoing source of earned traffic (with some regular maintenance).
Paid search (as the name implies) is not free. It must be constantly fed money to continue producing results. (There��s a reason why Google generated nearly $50 Billion dollars in revenue last year.) Stop feeding the Paid Search machine and it stops driving traffic. Contrast that with natural search — while it is not free and does require an often significant upfront investment, it is an ongoing source of earned traffic (with some regular maintenance). More than Half of Search Queries Have No Paid Ads: Given that more than half of all search queries return no paid ads at all, the only way to reach the more than 1.5 Billion queries per day that that represents is by appearing within natural search results.
Ignorant Boss:
��We Have a Good Brand and Rank Well for It, So We Don��t Need SEO.��
Ann Thinks: That��s like saying, ��The people in my store are already buying some things so that��s enough business for me.��
Ann Says: It��s pretty normal to be ranking well for your own brand, and searchers who are specifically searching for your brand are likely to already have made a decision to purchase from you. It is the searchers who are searching for terms relevant to your industry, who have not yet made a purchase decision, that you want to capture through SEO. Even a rudimentary scan shows that our brand is not highly visible for the kinds of terms that would generate significant traffic and revenue.
Ignorant Boss:
��SEO is Dead! Everyone��s Investing in Social; Isn��t That Where We Should Be Putting Our Money??��
Ann Thinks: Did your mother ask you, ��If everyone else was jumping off a bridge, does that mean you should to do it, too?�� a lot?
Ann Says: There��s no question that Social has a place in the marketer��s tool