sample seo-trends-2011-

Market Data / Supplier Selection Event Presentations / User Experience Benchmarking / Best Practice

SAMPLE: Trends in SEO Issues and Opportunities

In association with Conductor SAMPLE ONLY. Please download the full report from:

http://econsultancy.com/reports/seo-trends-issues-and-opportunities


Issues and Opportunities

EconsultancyNew York

41 East 11th St., 11th Floor

New York, NY 10003

United States

Telephone:

+1 212 699 3626

http://econsultancy.com

[email protected]

Econsultancy London

2nd Floor, 85 Clerkenwell Road

London EC1R 5AR

United Kingdom

Telephone:

+44 (0) 20 7681 4052

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be

reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,

electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording

or any information storage and retrieval system, without

prior permission in writing from the publisher.

Copyright © Econsultancy.com Ltd 2011

February 23, 2010

SEO Trends: Issues and Opportunities Page 1

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage and

retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. Copyright © Econsultancy.com Ltd 2011

Contents

Foreword from Conductor ......................................................... 2

Summary ................................................................................... 4

Respondent Demographics ........................................................5

SEO Metrics ............................................................................... 8

Issues in SEO ............................................................................ 11

SEO Budgets ............................................................................. 13

Automation ............................................................................... 16

Table of Figures

Figure 1: Respondents’ annual revenue ......................................................................... 5 Figure 2: Respondents’ target markets .......................................................................... 6 Figure 3: Sophistication of respondents’ SEO programs .............................................. 7 Figure 4: Importance of SEO metrics as influencers of business decisions ................. 8 Figure 5: Frequency of tracking SEO metrics.............................................................. 10 Figure 6: Rating of challenges to SEO program ........................................................... 11 Figure 7: Change in keyword volume ........................................................................... 12 Figure 8: SEO budget breakdown – normalized to 100% ........................................... 13 Figure 9: SEO budget breakdown by mode, median and average ...............................14 Figure 10: Anticipated changes to SEO budget ............................................................ 15 Figure 11: Value in SEO automation by area ................................................................16 Figure 12: Respondents’ degree of SEO automation .................................................... 17 Figure 13: Buy vs. build rationale of respondent organizations ................................. 18




1. Foreword from Conductor One can often tell a great deal about where an industry’s technology is headed by understanding both

the size of the opportunity in the space and the operational inefficiencies that plague it. The greater

the opportunity (the more at stake) and the greater the operational inefficiencies, the higher the

likelihood technology will step in to fill the gap. This can be expressed formulaically as: market

opportunity*operational inefficiencies = technology trajectory.

The opportunity in SEO is indisputable: according to Comscore, monthly worldwide searches have

reached more than 26 billion per month. With 92% of all search engine clicks occurring in the

natural search results, the opportunities for brands to reach consumers are limitless--provided they

are visible in the search engines.

The operational inefficiencies in SEO are equally indisputable: surveys have shown that up to 40% of

an SEO professional’s time is wasted on low-impact operational activities. The industry’s

inefficiencies can be traced back to its origins as a discipline amongst techies and web developers.

Home-grown tools have long been the tool of the trade--born from a lack of better options, they have,

until now persisted as the de facto operating system for SEO practitioners.

Here at Conductor we believe that is all about to change. We believe we are at an inflection point in

SEO: the size of the opportunity in natural search is simply too great, the inefficiencies too profound,

for Marketers not to be primed to be ready to do things differently. Online Marketers have seen a

similar maturation trajectory in other disciplines. PPC evolved to include sophisticated bid

management software, email marketing is largely mechanized with software tools, and display

platforms automate the deployment of web ads and provide the marketer with sophisticated click

analytics. As a long-time Marketer I have seen this phenomenon occur in many industries, both

online and off.

Our years of helping SEO professionals at many of the world’s largest brands succeed in natural

search gave us the rich background to understand their pain points and inefficiencies. From this

foundation we created Searchlight, a SaaS technology platform that automates many of the manual

and time-consuming tasks that hold back the SEO. Searchlight gives the SEO professional

unprecedented insight into their natural search visibility and is redefining SEO as a practice.

We are delighted to partner with Ecconsultancy on this study that will provide insight into the move

to metrics and technology and shed light on the rapid maturation of the SEO industry that is

happening right before our eyes.

Seth Dotterer

Senior Director of Marketing

SAMPLE ONLY. Please download the full report from:






2. Summary In the short history of digital marketing no innovation has been more important than the ability for

consumers and businesses to search online for the information and products they want. Every

demographic and industry has internalized search into its daily life and made it part of their product

research.

Marketers instantly recognized the importance of being easily found, but optimizing for search

engines has often been viewed as a largely technical activity, important but adjacent to central

marketing activities. This appears to be changing.

As emphasis in many sectors shifts toward inbound marketing, so too has the importance of SEO as

central to content and business strategy. 78% of the respondents to the SEO Trends Survey

describe SEO metrics as being more important influencers of strategy than they were only a year ago,

with 42% describing them as “much more important.”

As in other parts of the digital ecosystem, the need for SEO metrics and analysis has outpaced many

organizations’ ability to fulfill on it. 43% of the organizations sampled reported tracking conversion

rate rarely or never. The same is true for 44% when it comes to return on investment.







3. Respondent Demographics This report is based on findings from an online survey conducted by Econsultancy in December of

2010. Invitations to the survey were sent by email to selected lists of marketers and dispersed through

social media channels.

The final sample was limited to the 352 respondents matching the following criteria:

• IP address located in North America

• Self-identified as being a client-side marketer

• Self-identified as having a search engine optimization program

Figure 1: Which of the following best describes your organization’s annual revenue?

Number of respondents: 352



14%

27%

29%

11%10% 9%

0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

30%

35%

Under $1,000,000

$1,000,001 to $10,000,000

$10,000,001 to $50,000,000

$50,000,001 to $100,000,000

$100,000,001 to

$1,000,000,000

Over $1,000,000,000

All respondents





Figure 2: Which of the following target markets represented more than 25% of your

organization’s 2010 revenue?




54%

34% 34%

15%

3%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

Consumers Small and/or medium sized

businesses (SMBs)

Large businesses Institutions (schools,

government, NGOs)

Other (please specify)

All respondents





4. SEO Metrics SEO increasingly important in business decision making

78% of companies say SEO metrics have more influence on business strategy decisions than they did 12

months ago.

Figure 3: How important are SEO metrics as influencers of business decisions?




SEO is steadily becoming a more important aspect of digital and integrated marketing. SEO metrics

are more than measures of clicks and conversions: they reflect the connectedness of a brand with its

potential audience.

This perception is driven by several factors:

Maturation of search / audience





5. Issues in SEO More keywords, and a greater need to understand SEO

61% of respondents report managing more keywords in December of 2010 than one year previously.

Figure 4: Please rate the importance of the following to your SEO program.




44%

50%

53%

57%

62%

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70%

Scaling for large keyword volumes

Generating SEO metrics that are meaningful to others in the organization

Determining SEO priorities

"Closing the loop" - combining SEO with business metrics

Tracking long-term impact of SEO changes





6. SEO Budgets A shift toward content creation

Respondents are devoting an average of 28% of their SEO spending to content creation.

Figure 5: How is your organization’s SEO budget divided?




Drawing an accurate picture of digital budgets is difficult. Companies’ financial constructions are

unique and defy comparison with only a few survey questions. So for the purposes of this report,

we’ve limited our examination to the money spent on SEO. Although marketers can’t be expected to

pick specific percentages out of the air with total accuracy, it does seem reasonable to ask for rough

proportions of their total spending in a given discipline.





7. Automation

Many companies have sufficient internal technological resources to consider building instead of

buying technology. For these companies, making the right decision depends on a variety of internal

factors including capability, cost and ongoing support requirements.



Value in SEO recommendations

Marketers see value in the full slate of functionality offered by SEO automation. The highest

ranking is for the ability to get specific recommendations for page alterations, which 64% see as

“Very valuable.”


sample seo-trends-2011-

Technology