Inbound Marketing by The Numbers: A Marketers Go-To Guide

As Inbound Marketers, our minds often swim with important, must know data, numbers and figures. There’s a lot to know and things are continuously changing. A lot of these key numbers and figures eventually become second nature but it’s always nice to have a go-to guide. So, we’ve assembled a collection of some of the more important numbers that are used within the discipline of Inbound Marketing for your convenience and ours!

On-Page Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

• Page title character limit should be 70 characters or less
• Page meta description limit should be 100-150 characters or less
• Page meta keywords should be limited to 3-5 target keyword variations
• Header (H1) tags should be used on all pages and contain 1 target keyword
• Remember, although on-page SEO is the lowest hanging fruit for any new website, Google only weights this 25% when ranking content compared to 75% for your off-page SEO efforts

Blogging

• The ideal blogging frequency for B2B is 3-5 posts per week, but the more the better
• Similar to the noted on-page SEO recos above, keep your blog title to 70 characters or less and your blog meta description to 100-150 characters
• Utilize at least 1 target keyword in your blog title
• Restrict yourself to no more than 3 tags
• The best times to blog to gain links, comments and views are as followed (courtesy of Dan Zarrella Social Media Scientist):
• Links: 7:00-7:30am EST
• Comments: 8:00am EST
• Views: 10:00am EST

Social Media Marketing (Facebook & Twitter)

• Facebook: 
• Posts with 80 characters or less produce 66% higher user engagement
• Posts made between 8pm and 7am receive 20% more user engagement (Buddy Media via Jeff Bullas)
• Fan engagement is highest on Wednesdays (8% above average) followed by Sunday (2% above average) (Buddy Media via Jeff Bullas)
• Sticking to 1-2 posts per day produces 40% higher user engagement (Buddy Media via Jeff Bullas)
• Twitter: 
• Write tweets between 120-130 characters to increase CTR (Dan Zarrella)
• Tweets between 2-9pm EST have a higher average CTR, with the peak being mid afternoon (Dan Zarrella)
• Friday offers the highest ReTweet rate, averaging 18%, while Friday, Saturday and Sunday see a 0.2% CTR increase (Dan Zarrella)

Email Marketing

• Subject lines should be limited to 50 characters or less
• Wednesday distribution typically offers the highest weekday CTR, averaging 5%, while Saturday and Sunday average around a 9% CTR (Dan Zarrella)
• Opens and CTRs are highest in the early morning, peaking at 6am (Dan Zarrella via Social Media Revolver)
• The optimal frequency for CTR is 1-4 emails per month (Dan Zarrella via Social Media Revolver)

This isn’t the ultimate, comprehensive guide to ALL the important numbers involved with Inbound Marketing by any means, but it is some of the more frequent ones we use here at Weidert Group and that we often get asked by our clients. Make sure you bookmark this post for ongoing reference since I plan to keep it updated as new stats are released.

By Frank Isca
http://www.business2community.com