Will Top Rankings Change Anything?

If you’re jumping head first into social media and PPC for leads and sales, you might want to check out the real facts about whether Google is a better source.

The fact is, websites and free organic traffic will never go away. And we’re getting close to a time when Google and Facebook will face the anti-trust monopoly music.

However, if Google mobile searchers aren’t finding your business, that’s a problem, and not being visible on desktop searches is a serious loss for B2B sales. Restaurants, real estate agents, hotels, and services companies lose a great deal of business by not being easily accessible to mobile searchers.

There’s a lot of hope and hype for social media sales.  Spending on Social ads is predicted to increase however the bare facts are that search offers better results. This is because when consumers are already to learn and are eager to buy, they use Google to find products and services. They don’t go to Facebook.

If you like stats, you’ll appreciate what this one from eco2 Greetings Cards. CTR rates are 5 times higher and you can bet that conversion rates are just as high because organic search visitors come through with higher velocity and intent to purchase.

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googlehotelsFor companies that choose SEO, they see more more visitors and revenue than any other source. SEO means high rankings, more visibility and branding value because Google is highly used and respected. You get to take advantage of all Google’s hard work for free.

Hotel SEO – Very Lucrative

My client, a national hotel chain saw its traffic double from 1.2 million visits per year to 2.5 million visits per year because I optimized their site to rank highly on Google. It’s more difficult today which is why many hotels have given up. They shouldn’t give up. It’s still a bonanza of traffic.

Advertisers on Google Adwords pay $4 to $6 per click for many of these high volume keyword searches as you can see in the graphic below. One million free organic search visitors can equate to $6 million in added cost savings plus the revenue from tens of thousands of bookings. 75,000 bookings x $400 average booking translates to $25 million per year.

And they may repeat bookings if they like the hotel. The brand value then extends many years and keeps on producing.  Hotel SEO is obviously very profitable and in my client’s case perhaps up to $16 million per year. How’s your hotel chain doing?

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Here’s some facts about Google searches whether on desktop/laptops or mobile devices:

  • Google has 90% of the Internet search market
  • People rely on Google’s services so heavily that when they all went down for 5 minutes in 2013, global internet traffic dropped by 40% – Business Insider
  • SEO leads have a 14.6% close rate, while outbound leads (such as direct mail or print advertising) have a 1.7% close rate. – Search Engine Journal
  • Google’s search and advertising tools helped provide $111 billion of economic activity for more than 1.5 million businesses in the US – Google
  • On average, there are 11 billion searches per month in the United States or 2.3 million per minute. – Comscore
  • Mobile searches equal desktop searches in number – Google
  • According to Hotels.com, 74% of mobile bookings are made for same-day check-in.
  • 70-80% of users ignore the paid ads, and only focus on the free organic results. – Search Engine Land
  • Searches for luxury cars grew nearly 90% on mobile from 2014 to 2015.
  • Rings are among the most mobile-searched type of jewelry, followed by necklaces, bracelets, and earrings.
  • Mobile makes up 88% of all “near me” searches, with those mobile searches growing at 146% year over year – Search Engine Journal.

caseschillerhomesAn interesting search stat comes from Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland which revealed that the volume of searches for real estate agents is a good indicator of housing demand. Their stat shows that demand for real estate agents hasn’t caught up to the Case Schiller price index, suggesting there is much room for growth.

The search trends tell us that real estate agents should be building their web content and rankings now to capitalize on the coming increase in searches for realtors.

Do You Need Lots of High Quality Content?

There’s plenty of content on the web and social pages, however good content can create a lot of leads. Think about these stats:

  • The average content length for a web page that ranks in the top 10 results for any keyword on Google has at least 2,000 words. The higher up you go on the search listings page, the more content each web page has. – QuickSprout

Are you ready to take another chance on search engine optimization? The rankings are still quite amenable to SEO optimization strategies and you can guess that high ranking companies have exceptional revenue. Take a look at complete digital marketing services for business and if you’re a realtor check out our marketing services for realtors page.

Catch up on the latest real estate housing market forecasts.