New Study Shows The Critical Connection Between Marketing and SEO

SEM Rush recently released the results of a study on the factors with the biggest influence on domain ranking. The study included 600,000 worldwide keywords, which were compared to a list of alleged ranking factors that might influence page position.

The study uncovered several search engine result factors illustrating how SEO is becoming more connected to other marketing activities. Marketing impacts SEO and SEO results can influence marketing strategy.

The connection between marketing and SEO is particularly highlighted in the #1 factor identified by SEM Rush – direct website visits.

A direct visit is a website visit with no referring website. In other words, the site visitor typed your domain name directly into the address bar. Therefore, direct visits can only occur when someone already knows the name of your company and types the URL with either its .com, .org, or other extension. A person who types your business name into the address bar and hits enter will get a search results page. Hopefully, your website is at the top of the results. But no matter where your website is listed, if the site visitor clicks through from the search result page, that visitor will now be counted as organic search traffic, not direct traffic.

To increase direct traffic, you need to increase awareness of your company’s name and your domain name. Marketing your business through a variety of channels and promoting your domain name is the way to accomplish this goal. For the best possible search rankings, your marketing and SEO teams cannot be siloed. We know that most people receive marketing messages through a variety of channels, both online and offline. People often watch TV while using their mobile devices. We get our news from Facebook and on the radio. We read email and snail mail. We see billboards. And of course, we search online and visit websites.

Increasing direct traffic is not a magic bullet that will automatically give you the #1 position on google, but it is important to recognize its impact. Understanding that an investment into awareness-building marketing activities has the potential to impact your search engine results will help you take a more integrated approach to your digital strategy, improving search results as well as your business’ bottom line.  

Link to the study: https://www.semrush.com/ranking-factors/

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