Search engines first started to come around in the 1990’s.
The first search engine then was ‘Archie’. Archie meant archive without the ‘V’. Written and coded by Alan Emtage, Bill Heelan, and J. Peter Deutsch, students as McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
Yahoo was invented in January 1994, , securing their spot as the worlds first commercial internet search engine. Google launched 4 years later in September of 1998.
Today Google is the worlds largest search engine with 90% of online searches. Google Images is second, and Youtube is third.
One would think that digital marketing and search engine marketing would be a mature category.
But is it?
In 1995 the internet had 16 million users. Today it has 4.56 billion users.
That means 57.3% of the worlds population is currently on the internet.
3.5 billion users are using social media networks.
So as you can see, more people are coming online everyday. About 900,000 people a day for 12 months in a row has been the recent trend in 2018. Which is sure to only increase as more time goes on.
But why? A good example is Covid-19, also known as Coronavirus which has crippled many businesses, but helped others such as food delivery sales. Another example is online shopping sales are up because more people are ordering online at home.
If you are trying to understand if SEO is a smart investment we have the answer. Or if you are thinking about the best way to advertise and promote your business to sell products and services online you will find the answers below.
Is Digital Marketing Dead?
This lead’s us to our next question, is SEO Dead?
They say the best place to hide a dead body is on page two of Google.
SEO is not Dead, and Search engine marketing is not dead.
That means it is also safe to say that SEO is not dead. Because as long as your competitors are working to improve and optimize their websites, you will also need to do the same.
In fact, Search engine marketing, digital marketing, and SEO are in their infancy stage.
When search engines were just coming around in the 90s anyone could literally just stuff a page with keywords, and it would rank at the top of Google.
Today the rules are much, much more different.
Now SEO has moved to a more sophisticated system of technical expertise requiring multiple skills in IT, content creation, promotion, and branding.
For example it is a well known fact with many SEO professionals that content with 1,000 – 2,000 words is best because it shows knowledge and authority.
The average internet user spends about 6 hours and 30 minutes a day online.
So your content must be specific and targeted towards a specific audience to capture their attention.
If your content is not providing value or answers for your readers, then no one will stay long on your website or share it.
SEO Statistics
- 91.5% of online traffic never clicks to page 2.
- 93% of online searches begin with a search engine.
- 90% of all web searches are done with Google.
- 75% of people ignore Paid Ads.
- 87% of mobile phone users use search engines once a day or more.
- 78% of local mobile searches result in an offline purchase within 5 miles.
- 65% of people search on their phone in the ‘I want to buy moments’
- 18% of local mobile phone searches resulted in a purchase within a day.
With that said, The next question you should be asking yourself is do you need local SEO or national SEO?
So, is search engine marketing dead?
From the statistics above we can see search engine marketing and SEO is only growing and becoming more important for day to day business activities. It is essential for your business to succeed. The truth is that SEO is well alive and will only grow more and more in the coming years as more websites, competition and businesses are created.
Just make sure that you are not sharecropping and posting exclusively on sites liked Medium or Facebook as these websites are borrowed space.
What is Sharecropping?
Today publishing content on your own website is more important than ever.
These websites remove the ‘face’ of your content and essentially ‘neutralize it’ giving you what we call ‘The Amazon effect’. Which is equivalent to you buying something from Amazon and you don’t know who made it, you just know you got it from Amazon.
Therefore sharecropping (posting content on other website platforms) is dangerous for your brand as it does not promote your brand. it promoted the website you are posting on. (You can read the author or know what publication it’s coming from, but the ultimate takeaway you get is: “I saw this on Facebook/Medium”.
A good example of sharecropping gone wrong is when the Huffington Post unpaid contributor blogger program was canceled. Which had many respected authors writing free content, then one day they just shut it down without a warning or telling anyone.
This is why we emphasize to our customers that you should be focusing on your own website. Which is totally under your control.
Are you not showing in Google where you should be?
Contact us today and we will tell you exactly how to fix your search engine rankings with our free SEO audit.
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