2014
2013
Autospeak-Straight Talk contains articles covering digital and social media marketing social communities and events marketing
Do you really know how important SEO is? Seriously, do you really?You can’t just have a website with cars on it any more. You’ve got to make sure people can see it, which means you’re responsible for link building, citation building, site optimizing, blog writing, and social media work.
That seems like too much work to most dealers, but numbers don’t lie – and these numbers show just how important SEO is for continued success.
The first stat I hit dealers with is that there are 100 billion searches per month on Google1 - that’s 33 million a day. To put it in better perspective, if each person on the planet were able to, they’d have to search on Google 5 times a day, every day. This at first seems astronomical, but even today I’ve probably used Google 10+ times for non-SEO related searches. I usually use this stat to illustrate the importance of Google’s market share to dealers.  Frankly, Google rules, and it doesn’t really matter if your small business ranks high on AOL.
The second stat: 89% of consumers use search engines for purchase decisions as well as (3.) 71% of business purchase decisions are started with a search engine. I know, I know… That’s two stats, Bryant. I threw these together for a specific reason. It is in fact a ‘double-edged sword’ – regardless of the sector or industry you’re in, both companies and consumers are using search engines to start the buying process.
At this point, I’m usually steering a dealer towards answering the “what does this mean for me?†question. The next stat I use: of the 30 billion mobile searches a year, 12 billion are local.(4.) It is widely expected that in the near future, local searches will account for over half of all mobile searches annually. This is where I start hammering in the importance of a mobile site. If you don’t have one yet, you absolutely need one.
With the fourth stat, I try to hammer home the importance of the mobile site. This is when I tell dealers that 77% of mobile search happens at work or home even though a computer may be accessible (5.) As strange as this sounds, it happens more often than you’d expect. Regardless of where I am, even if I’m at my computer,  if I’m looking for driving directions, I use my phone. At home, if I am browsing on the couch, I am using my tablet. It never occurs to me to jump on the computer in the office, or to pull up the browser on my home desktop for a simple and quick search.
The fifth stat backs up the mobile aspect even more strongly: 46% of mobile web users are unlikely to return to a website they had trouble accessing from their phone and even more are unlikely to recommend the site (6.) This is succinct enough to illustrate not only the importance of having good mobile content, but a site that’s easy to navigate and isn’t confusing.
The next stat is what I call “the closer†– 55% of purchase-related conversions occur within 1 hour of the initial mobile search  (7.) Simply and strongly put, mobile sites convert at a much higher rate than conventional websites – but if you aren’t doing SEO, no one will find your site… and no one will convert.
The next three stats further illustrate the importance of SEO to dealers: in all searches conducted, 70% of users click on organic results  (8.) that 53% of the organic search clicks go to the first link (9.) and most importantly, 75% of users never click past the first page (10.) This is usually when the bell goes off for most dealers. They finally realize that if they  want to get more clicks, they have to rank the highest in the organic results – and that won’t happen without SEO.
Stats even show that organic search leads are more qualified. SEO leads have a 14.6% close rate, while those archaic print or direct mail ads only close at a 1.7% rate (11.) Pretty crazy – leads from search engines are 8.5 times more likely to close than a standard outbound lead.
Most dealers aware of any of these points until we talk to them, which is why I’m sharing this post. In fact, Search Engine Optimization is still only an industry term that most people outside of marketing probably hasn’t heard. These numbers are proof – SEO is not only vital to maintaining a brand, it’s absolutely necessary if you want to stay competitive and grow your business.
Written by Bryant Goodall
DealerNet Services
 Stat Sources:
1 Search Engine Land – August 2012 (http://searchengineland.com/google-search-press-129925)
2 Brafton – February 2012 (http://www.brafton.com/news/89-percent-of-consumers-use-search-engines-for-purchase-decisions)
3 Brafton – December 2011 (http://www.brafton.com/news/search-marketing-alert-61-percent-of-business-purchase-decisions-start-with-search)
4 Search Engine Land – April 2012 (http://searchengineland.com/analyst-mobile-to-overtake-pc-for-local-search-by-2015-119148)
5 Search Engine Land – August 2012 (http://searchengineland.com/study-55-percent-of-mobile-search-driven-conversions-happen-in-one-hour-or-less-151432)
6 Gomez – 2011 (http://www.gomez.com/resources/whitepapers/survey-report-what-users-want-from-mobile/)
7 Search Engine Land – August 2012 (http://searchengineland.com/study-55-percent-of-mobile-search-driven-conversions-happen-in-one-hour-or-less-151432)
8 Search Engine Journal – April 2012 (http://www.searchenginejournal.com/24-eye-popping-seo-statistics/42665/)
9 Search Engine Watch – October 2012 (http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2215868/53-of-Organic-Search-Clicks-Go-to-First-Link-Study)
10 Hubspot – May 2011 (http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/14416/100-Awesome-Marketing-Stats-Charts-Graphs-Data.aspx)
11 Search Engine Journal – April 2012 (http://www.searchenginejournal.com/24-eye-popping-seo-statistics/42665/)
- See more at: http://blog.autorevo.com/2013/08/10-seo-stats/#more-3198