Where Will Consumers Be Searching Online in 2021?

Search Engine Market Share – Where Will Consumers Be Searching?Data Showing Why Business Must Use SEO

So where will consumers search in 2021? Some timely US-based data compiled from December 2019 to December 2020 by StatCounter.com focused on where consumers search or where they are searching from, the most. Better yet, from what search engine will the new business leads most likely come to your business?

  • All Platforms: Google 87.81% > Bing 6.45% > Yahoo 3.05% > DuckDuckGo 2.3%
  • Mobile Devices: Google 94.48% > DuckDuckGo 2.25% > Yahoo 1.94% > Bing 1.13%
  • Desktop PCs: Google 80.41% > Bing 12.24% > Yahoo 4.44% > DuckDuckGo 2.28%
  • Tablets: Google 77.72% > Bing 15.27% > DuckDuckGo 3.6% > Yahoo 3.17%

And while it may be obvious to most that Google remains the dominant search engine, it’s not wrong to think that others like Bing or DuckDuckGo may be gaining traction or share with consumers. So we decided to check and write it up for those of you who might be interested. 

More Consumer Search & Lead Generation Data

According to Small Biz Genius (January 2021) not only do 70-80% of all search users ignore paid search ads – completely, but a lead driven by SEO is 8X more likely to become a paying customer than those generated through an advertising campaign! And while we often say 80% of your competition is not using or competing with SEO, 61% of marketers surveyed by SBG say that in 2021 SEO is their top inbound marketing priority. Also relevant to business owners operating in a particular geographic region, 46% of all Google searches are locally motivated.

Search engines actually generate 300% more traffic to websites than social media. And while most people don’t go into a search engine to then jump out to a website, it is why a lot of marketers participate in social networks… to drive them out to their website. What’s more, 51% of all website traffic (that can be tracked) comes from a search engine. So whether you post to or advertise on the various social media sites the total combined traffic they drive to a website is still a great deal less than from search. It’s an important detail because when someone searches, they have intent and are thereby qualified as a genuine lead; whereas with advertising, the interaction begins as an interruption.

And while advertisers aren’t waiting around for leads to come and find them, this data not only shows where they come from but also that targeting a person already searching for what you = the marketer has to offer should probably be a 2021 priority. 

Better SEO Support

Based in Monmouth County, NJ, Kinetic Knowledge is a full-service digital marketing firm offering small business SEO, website design, website fix & troubleshooting, website host & management, social media, graphic design, content, and custom webmaster service solutions. Give us a call to learn more about our services. We can be reached at 732-722-5915 or visit us online at www.kineticknowledge.com

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How Should SEO Marketers Think About Social Media?

Does Social Media Support SEODoes Social Media Support SEO

Business owners often ask us is, “does social media support SEO?” Back in 2014 Google’s Matt Cutts said that social activity, signals like the no. of Facebook likes and Twitter followers (i.e. an entity’s authority & influence), did NOT affect search rankings. Marketers had been going forth believing that social following, as a signal for trustworthiness & quality, was factored in by Google’s search algorithm. And yet several leading authorities on the subject of Google search results continued to argue that, while social media might not be a direct factor, it certainly influenced competitive SEO rank. So, for SEO-focused marketers, what is it? Let’s have a look at how social media signals can matter, regardless of the no. of people that follow a particular business.

Top 4 Ways Social Media Can Support SEO

1. Social Network Account Post’ Outbound Links

In contrast to the statement Cutts made in 2014, he also said that Google does crawl social media accounts to the degree it is allowed. He said that if something occurs in Facebook or Twitter, for instance, that Google can crawl then it may return that as a part of a search result. And so while the authority of a social account may not impact search rank, links published in a social media account post… just might. Meaning those links from social account posts can be seen as credible back-links to a website page and thereby influence a website page’s rank for various keyword searches.

2. Social Network Account Profiles in Search Engine Results

Social network pages (i.e. Facebook Business pages) can show up in a search result for that brand. In fact, social network pages are often up towards the top of those brand-driven search results. And if social network pages matter to Google enough to show them in results when people search a brand, well then it matters to have those pages set up with current information and active useful content.

3. Social Networks Offer Search

While most people go to Google, maybe some to Bing and others, when they want to search – social networks also offer search. Albeit, the results are strictly content found in that social network, and that rarely includes the depth that a web page or pages offer. And/but so if a person who frequents Facebook, and there are a lot of people who do, decides to search in Facebook … well then it pays to be set up with current information, active useful content, and also links back to website pages. So far as this point goes, search engine optimization can and maybe should include social network pages prepared for social media searches. And by the way, YouTube is not only a place to host video content – it is a search engine too!

4. Search Algorithms Change

What Matt Cutts said in 2014 doesn’t necessarily reflect on ‘algorithmic changes’ made more recently. Social media seems to get bigger all the time, so how a search engineer factors social network pages, activity, following, and content into their algorithm may change from year to year. And Cutts represented Google, but his comments don’t reflect on how Bing’s algorithm (nor DuckDuckGo’s, for that matter) ranks content.

Will Social Media Support SEO More In The Future

Search Engines cannot sit still: in fact, the effort to answer queries usefully has got to be an ever-evolving process that adjusts to the way people use the Internet. If not, Google may find itself losing ground to upstarts like DuckDuckGo. People use the web to build relationships, reach audiences, and to share ideas. It is, in effect, social … and so as SEO-focused marketers – we have to follow suit! At a minimum, maintain your social media accounts with accurate up to date information and maybe use posts as a means to share current information PLUS links back to your website pages.

PS: We speak with a lot of business owners who haven’t necessarily thought about how a social media presence, including posting activity, is different from social media advertising. None of the above refers to social media advertising, so much as it does just having an accurate consistent (with a web presence, including website) Social network page and posting presence.

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When Does SEO Work?

Does SEO Work?

Small Business SEO NJ

Target Search Results – Does SEO Work?

We often receive calls from business people highly uninformed about their web presence. They want to know:

Does SEO work?
How can our business get visitors and leads online?
How do we help folks searching somehow find us?
How do they know who we are, what we do, and/or where we do it?

When these business people decide to look into SEO service, it is inevitably because they realize their web presence is not visible to people that search.

Does A Website Equate To SEO?

A website with good content is a crucial part of the equation, but just having a website does not necessarily mean that anyone will visit. And while various types of website software (WordPress for instance) offer on-page SEO tools, it is only the actual use of them that is going to matter competitively.

Ultimately we must have the attention of search engines first before we can then become visible to qualified (by their search effort) consumers. Website pages MUST be optimized for search engines, but off-website signals (i.e. Google My Business)will also be necessary to rank them high. How much competition there is will factor into how many signals are necessary to become MORE competitive & rank higher for target keywords. When in panic mode we often want a resolution fast and, unfortunately, that’s NOT how SEO or search engines work. Granted some keyword targets are less competitive, but we’ve got to continuously schmooze GOOGLE to rank for our keyword targets; we’ve got to impress with the most useful content, including various on and off-website signals the search engines use to compare our businesses to the competition!


Realistic Expectations About Having Good SEO

There are many areas of SEO: you may build the most beautiful website ever, but it’s not enough. Worse, search results never stop changing (see: What is the Google Crawl?). You must execute fundamental SEO best practices including keyword-optimized content, internal page-linking, quality inbound links from other websites, quality outbound links to demonstrate supporting content, accurate listings & citations, and depending on how competitive for the keywords in a particular business discipline, quite possibly more.

Search engines are way ahead of you! They look for compliance with a set of quality guidelines and so many signals, not to mention the popularity of your content versus the competition. And popularity is not paying someone to build 1,000 backlinks anymore; that is going to be identified as spamming and do more harm than good. Actually being chosen from a set of results and then having those people spend time on your pages is an example of a signal that will improve rankings.  


Should My Business Invest in SEO?

You may be asking, “Why should I invest time or money into SEO if it’s going to take a little time to produce results?” You may decide not to implement an SEO strategy, but your serious competitors certainly will. Genuinely qualified leads are not waiting to be interrupted by an advertisement; they are actually searching for what they want AND for what you offer. No SEO and you won’t be there for them, but some of your competitors will.

If you want immediate visibility try some advertising, just know that versus SEO it is an interruption and leaves nothing. If you want to have the type of web footprint that will allow consumers to find their way to your website often, on their terms & timeline, you will need SEO. If you want something to last so more leads can find it, you need SEO. Whether you are a brick and mortar business or 100% web-based, your web presence needs to be available for the people already considering your product, your service, and/or your brand.

80% of all consumers research businesses online before every buying and so those of us who fail to implement an SEO strategy will ultimately fail to capture the most qualified consumers on the web.


Better Local SEO Services

monmouth county nj seo services

 

Based in Monmouth County, NJ, Kinetic Knowledge is a full-service digital marketing firm offering small business SEO,  website design, website fix & troubleshooting, website host & management, social media, graphic design, content, and custom webmaster service solutions. Give us a call to learn more about our services. We can be reached at 732-722-5915 or visit us online at www.kineticknowledge.com

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What Should Your Business URL or Domain Be?

Ever Wonder What Your Business URL or Domain Should Have Been?

 

local seo nj

Small Business SEO NJ

URLs or Domains are necessary, a business has to have at least one. They are also marketing tools; however, they do not correlate to competitive search engine rank or visibility unless supported by other highly important factors. Generally speaking, a business URL or domain name can be the exact name of the business; it may only be related to the name of that business, related to its service or it can be both the name and service. But mostly it will serve as where the business is located on the web. For local service-based businesses, there are generally 3 types of domain names:

  1. Branded Domain
  2. Keyword Domain
  3. Hybrid Domain

See more detail on these 3 below.

Domains Matter Little When It Comes to Competitive SEO


Regardless of the business URL or Domain your business chooses, it is always important to understand that you cannot game Google’s system with your choice. Google only prioritizes the best answers to a search or a question. A domain, no matter how close to the subject, does not equate to a ‘best answer’.

“Just because keywords are in a domain name doesn’t mean that it’ll automatically rank for those keywords. And that’s something that’s been the case for a really, really long time.” – John Mueller, Senior Webmaster Trends Analyst – Google

Unless there is no competition for the answer to a search and that is 99.99% completely unlikely in a world gone online, a website or a website page’s status as the best answer will have to be earned. And that is going to be based on up to 200 competitive signals, starting with the content of the page itself.

Given the choice of A) an unrelated domain name page with great content, great use/presentation of its keywords, trusted backlinks, supportive outbound links, lots of user activity (competitive measurable examples), and B) a keyword-based domain without, the latter option or B) stands no chance. Sure a unique and memorable domain is good, but a unique and memorable domain that also supports people with the information they seek is infinitely better.

1. What Is A Branded Domain Name?

A branded domain is the use of a brand or business name itself. Like, for example, Kinetic Knowledge is both our companies name and our business URL.

Our name reflects a theory we had when we got started about 17 years ago. That was related to our belief that success online starts with and is directly related to knowledge-based content. If that knowledge could be published then moved out through different channels like search engines, social networks, and email then it could be ‘Kinetic’. Kinetic meaning ‘… of, related to or produced by motion’ and in our view relating it to and supported by the nature of the web. If so a business could, in theory, build visibility with and hopefully attract traffic to where it could be converted to leads.

And so ours is an example of a “Branded” domain name. Please note that kineticknowledge.net or kineticknowledge.org, for example, are also branded domains. In these cases, we are only referring to the root domain and not the “TLD”. The ‘root’ domain is the part before the dot. What comes after the dot is the “TLD”, or Top Level Domain, like “.com”, “.net” or “.org”.


2. What Is A Keyword Domain Name?

Many local businesses will serve one geographic area for a particular service. For example, consider a theoretical local contractor in Belmar NJ named ‘Jones Construction’. It might be common for this business to try and purchase a domain like “belmarnjconstruction.com” and this would be a keyword-based domain. An “Exact Match Domain” (EMD) would match a targeted keyword exactly, like maybe “construction.com”, if that was was even available.

The domain “belmarnjconstruction.com” might be the best idea in terms of a Keyword Domain used for identification amongst local prospects.


3. What Is A Hybrid Domain Name?

A hybrid domain name, obviously, is a mix of the two or ‘Jones’ and ‘Construction’. So a brand and a keyword in the domain like, for instance, maybe “JonesConstruction.com.”

Ask us about local SEO and getting your business set up to compete online successfully!

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