Of all the online marketing channels – organic search/SEO, referrals and PPC – where does the majority of traffic to a site originate from?
Does someone do a search on Google using keyword phrases to search for the products and/or services you offer online?
Or, are they referred to your site from an online directory like YellowPages or Google Maps? Or, do they see your PPC or social network ad?
Data recently compiled at HubSpot definitively proves that organic search is the primary driver of traffic to websites – which underscores the importance of them being search engine friendly. From the survey of 2,100 of its customers, the company shows that site traffic coming from online searches is 67.2% greater than from referral sites and 156% greater than PPC.
They further break the data down by industry – traffic from search engines is much higher in manufacturing, medicine/health services and retail. Referrals play a more important role in other industries like technology, software and online marketing but still does not exceed online search as a primary source of traffic.
So from this data, it really depends on your industry in determining what you allocate to each of these online marketing areas.
In terms of organic search and SEO, Google is by far the most popular search engine still, handling 71% of online searches this past November according to Hitwise. The two closest were Yahoo! at 15% and Bing at 9%.
It’s clear though – having a website optimized for the search engines is key to driving traffic.