Only 5 Out of 10 Marketers Say SEO is Very Effective For Increasing Web Traffic
By Anna Johnson on July 7th, 2010For most, if not all, Internet marketers, the purpose of search engine optimization (SEO) is to generate more website traffic. If so, about half must be sorely disappointed, with only 57 percent of search marketers regarding SEO as very effective in increasing web traffic.
According to MarketingSherpa’s survey of 2,194 search marketers, detailed in its 2011 Search Marketing Benchmark Report, around 3 out of 10 (35 percent) see SEO as very effective in increasing leads and 2 out of 10 (26 percent) regard SEO as very effective in increasing online sales revenue.
Based on these results, manyInternet marketers must be somewhat disappointed with their SEO efforts to date.
To some extent, this may be explained by MarketingSherpa’s finding that only a minority of search marketers said that their typical organic search engine ranking for their targeted keywords was a top 1-3 position.
Indeed, 34 percent of marketers who incorporated social media marketing into their SEO strategies said their typical search engine ranking was a top 1-3 position, whilst 35 percent of marketers who didn’t incorporate social media in their search campaigns said their typical ranking was in the top 1-3. In other words, 34-35 percent of search marketers had a typical ranking of 1-3 for their targeted keywords.
On the other hand, given that another 31 percent of non-social media users and 35 percent of social media users (33 percent of all search marketers) said their typical ranking was in positions 4-6, we can say that an overwhelming majority (68 percent of) search marketers had a 1-6 ranking on the first page of search results.
So if most marketers’ SEO efforts are yielding relatively high search rankings, why aren’t they also delivering more traffic?
Two possible reasons: the fact that there’s a huge difference between a top 1-3 listing and a 4-6 listing (not to mention anything lower) and a failure to target the right keywords.
To be specific, the traffic associated with a given search listing rises geometrically, rather than linearly, the higher is the listing. In other words, the difference between traffic from one listing to another is not incremental, it’s geometric.
Secondly, it may be that marketers are not targeting all the right keywords. While some keywords may be consistently effective in delivering traffic, others may vary in their capacity to generate traffic over time.
July 8th, 2010 at 3:55 am
It seems to me that SEO is becoming a bit “ho hum” in the minds of some. And ignored completely by others. Every now and again I check what some sites are using as keyword tags and am stunned to find that often they do not have any at all. I put this down to the fact that some site builders don’t either know or care about SEO when they build websites. Which is not a good thing IMHO.
But SEO can only go so far. Unless the search engines know that a website exists it doesn’t matter how good (or bad) the SEO is.
Again, IMHO, it is still necessary yo have some good links back to the site so that the search engine spiders will know to have a look.
Cheers
John