3 Interesting SEO Poll Questions and 3 Takeaways for Marketers

Not everybody does things the same way.  Some people walk down the stairs into a pool while others dive right in.  Most people know that for a building to be built you need to start with a blueprint, but do they know all of the steps in between that take it from a blueprint to a finished product?  The point is we go about even the simplest things in different ways and we see things happening in front of us all of the time without fully understanding what else goes into it.
How we search for things online and why we see what we see in Google is no different.

A recent SEO and Search Marketing study asked consumers about their online search habits and what drives them to click where they click.  We have highlighted 3 questions that we found most interesting and have the potential to impact your marketing efforts.

1. People were asked for possible ranking factors consumers believed most likely to affect organic search results.

• 56% said relevancy
• 49% said popularity
• 33% said click through rate
• 18% said back links

Meanwhile, actual search engine ranking factors in order of importance:

1. Trust/ Authority
2. Link Popularity
3. Anchor Text
4. On-Page Keyword
5. Hosting Data
6. Traffic + Click-Thrus
7. Social Graph

2. How consumers feel about PPC ads that run alongside organic results.

• 63% are more likely to click an organic result over a paid ad
• 23% have never clicked a paid ad

3. Most consumers are unaware that the results they see are not the same for every Google user.

• 64% are unaware that Google personalized their results
• 54% are unhappy that Google tracks their online activity to personalize results

In conclusion, marketers should look at these results carefully. It shows a general public still unaware of the increases in personalization and trust in determining search engine results. We can recommend 3 takeaways for the marketers from this study.

1. Backlinks and Trust are two key elements of search engine ranking success and should not be discounted even if consumers feel otherwise.
2. There is still a reluctance for consumers to click on paid ads, so SEO spending should be continued in addition to paid search.
3. Social media will continue to impact SEO regardless of consumers knowing or caring about this trend.