Search engine marketing (SEM) is a tactic that marketers cannot afford to ignore. This batch of stats demonstrates why.
1. 85% of retailers surveyed said search marketing (including paid and SEO) was the most effective customer acquisition tactic.
2. 70% of agencies predict client SEO budgets would increase this year; 47% of respondents said there would be a significant or, at least, some increase to their SEO budget.
3. 19% of brand marketers expect to significantly increase their paid search investements next year.
4. Mobile advertising in the U.S. will total $17.73 billion in 2014, with mobile search spending accounting for more than half of that total, or $9.02 billion.
5. By 2018 mobile search spending will reach $28.41 billion, or 85.9%, of the U.S. digital search advertising market.
6. The volume of U.S. Google searches about financial topics spikes in the beginning of the year; travel searches are most popular during the summer months; and retail searches start building for the holiday season in September.
7. Google holds a staggering 67.6% of the U.S. search engine market share. Bing remains at a distant second with 18.7%.
8. When comparing search ad spend in Q2, Google continued to dominate with a 78% share of search advertiser spend, while Yahoo/Bing garnered 22% of the share.
9. Much of the growth in paid search can be attributed to increased advertiser focus on mobile devices, including both tablets and smartphones. Spend share on mobile devices continues to climb on a quarter-over-quarter basis, with overall mobile spend share reaching 29%.
10. More than 1 billion search queries are made a month on Facebook.
11. 93% of online experiences begin with a search engine.
12. Search is the No. 1 driver of traffic to content sites, beating social media by more than 300%.
Source:15 Mind-Blowing Stats About Search Engine Marketing, cmo
