The Year in Stats - SEO, Content, and Data Analytics

Create quality content, optimize for search engines, track in analytics, repeat. Sound familiar? We know that each of these activities is crucial for organic search success, and it’s well documented. So if you’re planning SEO in 2015, take this big list of stats and research to your team and show them it’s time to get serious about these key marketing activities.

Organic Search Statistics 2014

No doubt that the organic search channel has proved its place in marketing over the past few years, and data points from 2014 show it:

• According to BrightEdge data, organic search was the largest driver of traffic to websites across sectors studied, and the largest driver of revenue – even over paid search – in most sectors studied.
• Thirty percent (30) of traffic to insurance sites in June 2014 came from search, according to a study by Millward Brown Digital.
• According to an experiment conducted by the Groupon marketing team, up to 60 percent of direct traffic is actually organic search traffic.
• Mobile implementation errors cost websites 68 percent of organic search traffic, according to BrightEdge data.
• Search engine marketing, including SEO, is the most effective acquisition channel for 85 percent of retailers, says Shop.org.
• Search is the starting point for 60 percent of travelers, according to data from Kenshoo.
• According to BloomReach, 49 percent of U.K. consumers use organic search to find retailers.

Content Statistics 2014

Fueling organic search success is content, and it has its own set of unique opportunities and challenges. From the Content Marketing Institute’s most recent research on content for the B2B and B2C sectors, we find the following stats …

B2B Content Stats

• Eighty-three (83) percent of B2B marketers use content for lead generation.
• Website traffic is the key metric for tracking content success, according to 63 percent of B2B marketers, while 39 percent say SEO rankings is.
• Eighty-one (81) percent of B2B marketers say articles on their websites are a most-used tactic; 80 percent say blogs are, and of those that use blogs, 60 percent say it’s the most effective.
• Publishing new content multiple times per week was the norm for 26 percent of B2B marketers; the next largest data set was “weekly,” at 17 percent.

B2C Content Stats

• Seventy-seven (77) percent of B2Cs use content marketing.
• Engagement was the primary goal for content for 88 percent of B2Cs.
• Sixty-two (62) percent of B2Cs say website traffic is a key metric for content success.
• Blogs were the most effective platform for content, according to 54 percent of B2C respondents.
• Thirty-one (31) percent of B2Cs publish new content multiple times per week.

Earlier this year Kapost published a list of more than 200 statistics that prove content marketing is here to stay. The statistics included could be great for use in your 2015 presentations and meetings.

LookBook HQ, Oracle Eloqua produced also produced a useful infographic on how digital marketers are building out content strategies.

Analytics Technology Statistics 2014

“Big data” can be a big problem with the wrong technology or lack of technology, and many marketers are still working to find the best solutions to help them process data in a meaningful way. Despite best efforts, many C-level marketers still struggle in that area.

According to 2014 data from CMOSurvey.org:

• Forty-four (44) percent of CMOs say they lack quantitative metrics to demonstrate the impact of marketing spend.
• Approximately 20 percent of CMOs use the manager’s “judgment” to measure marketing ROI.
• Sixty-seven (67) percent of companies do not formally evaluate the quality of their marketing analytics.
• Despite all the previous stats, spend on marketing analytics is set to increase by 73 percent in three years.

Research data gives us a great benchmark for what other companies are dealing with, and really, shows that many of us share the same challenges and wins. If you’re struggling to gain support in a key area in 2015, or just want to show off in your next meeting, perhaps use couple of the powerful stats in this list.