I ought to start this post with a quick shoutout to Dan Petrovic for posting this infographic back in 2011. I’ve been showing it to clients, potential clients, students, basically anyone who would listen since I got started in the SEO game almost a decade ago!
Did you know that 94% of B2B Buyers Research Online for Purchase Decisions?
94 PERCENT OF B2B BUYERS RESEARCH ONLINE FOR PURCHASE DECISIONS Click To Tweet
I’m not sure where the other 6% of people are doing their research, but I’d guess that stat from a study in 2014 has maybe grown since then. 😉
- 77 percent use Google search
- 84.3 percent check business websites
- 34 percent visit 3rd party websites
- 41 percent read user reviews
The same behavioral patterns apply to individual consumers. At ClickZ Live San Francisco, Google Analytics Advocate Adam Singer said the average person consults 10.4 sources before finally making a purchase. This generally spans channels, is sparked by in-store visits and revisited with email messages, and continued across search and business websites.
So for driving organic traffic, its crucial that you’re on the front page of Google. Pages on the front page get a massive 91.5% of the total clicks from all searches.
When was the last time you checked page two of Google for something?
Some more food for thought:
Getting to the first page of Google doesn’t mean your work is done! In fact, at AdInfusion, we reach out to potential clients with stagnant rankings on the front page all the time. That’s because there is probably still lots of work to do for many of them!
If you have read this far, you probably have realized that your position on the front page matters.
Being #1 gets you an average share of 43.2% of the traffic, and #2 is just 30.7% and #3 at 23.3%.
So if you’re sitting at #7 right now, imagine the extra traffic, leads, and revenue your website could be generating if I got you into the top 3.
I’ll close this post out with a crucial point: being #1 for a keywords means Google recognizes that your website is adding more value than any other website for a search term. So yes, links and content matter. But context is so important! And that is what you should aim for. So if you’re not the top result for a keyword, maybe we should talk about why.