Marketing Sherpa – 2012 Search Marketing Benchmark Report: SEO Edition

Growing Shift to Inbound Marketing Efforts

Search marketing continues to evolve in both its organic and paid avenues due largely to growth of social media. Now searchers receive instant, real-time social media content including personalized and local information. Results pages include not only blue links, but also video, images, news, press releases and customer reviews.

This presents an ongoing challenge (and opportunity) for marketers who are trying to find ways new ways to engage their audience with relevant content at the right time. To help drive traffic, marketers are now shifting their priorities to inbound marketing efforts like creating effective content through blogs, webinars and whitepapers, improving keyword and key phrase research and optimizing SEO landing pages.

MarketingSherpa’s eighth annual benchmark report gives you critical insight and analysis into an SEO tactics degree of difficulty, execution and their corresponding level of effectiveness in terms of reaching marketing objectives. It will also review some very effective but underutilized local and mobile search tactics.

6 Key Questions Answered in this year’s study

What impact has social marketing had on SEO?

How are marketers aligning their search marketing objectives and overcoming the most difficult SEO challenges?

What is the usage, effectiveness and level of effort required for SEO tactics and content products?

How are organizations allocating marketing dollars and where they are shifting their efforts?

What are marketers doing to fare well in local and mobile search results?

How do agencies view their clients’ SEO and inbound marketing efforts?

In the all-new 2012 Search Marketing Benchmark Report – SEO Edition you’ll receive a comprehensive reference guide containing more than 160 charts with analytical commentary, hundreds of informative insights from your peers, several case studies of real-life search and inbound marketing campaigns and more.

Developing a Strategy is a Top Challenge but Bottom Objective

Many organizations are sidestepping the discipline of charting out a strategic plan and are choosing instead to put their immediate focus on tactical objectives like increasing website traffic, lead generation and measurable ROI.

They know to achieve good organic rankings and ensure that their products and services are found across all formats and venues, they have to be strategic with their planning and processes, and ever-savvy with the creation and optimization of all digital assets.

However, developing a process to plan, measure and execute the performance of SEO programs isn’t their top objective. Interestingly, increasing measurable ROI ranked higher as an objective than developing an actual strategy to do so!

2012 Search Marketing Benchmark Report – SEO Edition – EXCERPT

This 202-page report helps you gain a deeper knowledge of the key issues from monitoring and tracking metrics, planning, integrating social media, content, local and mobile search.

Key findings from the 2012 Search Marketing Benchmark Report – SEO includes:

Content creation works the best, but takes the most work

Incremental SEO improvements add up to large gains

Future investments in SEO backed by having SEO process in place

Local business listing tactics are underutilized

Developing a strategy is a top challenge but bottom objective

Special Sections: New Search Insights, Tactics, and Charts

The 2012 Search Marketing Benchmark Report-SEO Edition is more than just data. This all-new report gives you analysis and insight on topics critical to the future success of search marketing:

Using social media boosts leads 30% and revenue 114%

Finding and testing niche content increases organic traffic 40%

Revamped and optimized web content doubles lead conversions

Turning a YouTube channel into a powerful inbound marketing hub

Using analytics to optimize SEO performance

Achieving results from social media and integration

Successfully optimizing for local and mobile search

Content marketing campaign generates surge in traffic

What Others Have Said about MarketingSherpa’s Search Marketing Benchmark Reports?

“MarketingSherpa has done it again with their 2011 Search Marketing Benchmark Report – SEO Edition. With the help of Lead Author, Research Analyst Jen Doyle, they’ve put together an excellent resource for marketers looking for strategic guidance as well as real data about search engine marketing.”

-Lee Odden, TopRank Online Marketing

“Once again, MarketingSherpa delivers THE definitive benchmark to all things search. But this time they’ve taken it to a completely new level, the SEO edition provides tactical insights, analysis and commentary from industry insiders that allow you to take the actions needed to remain competitive. I can’t wait to review the upcoming PPC version as well.”

-Jim Kukral, author of the book “Attention! This Book Will Make You Money”

2012 Search Marketing Benchmark Report – SEO Edition Summary Table of Contents:

Chapter 1: SEO Objectives and Challenges (pg.7-22)

Informal processes still define SEO marketing maturity

Challenges hampering SEO effectiveness over last 12 months

Objectives for SEO programs in next 12 months

Marketer insights on developing SEO marketing strategies

Chapter 2: SEO Tactics (pg.23-46)

Majority of organizations run SEO campaigns in-house

Keyword-focused tactics are the most popular

Good content is great link bait…but difficult to create

Content creation may be difficult, but it is effective

Marketer insights on success with SEO tactics

Chapter 3: Monitoring and Tracking Metrics (pg.47-74)

Web conversion often defined as multiple-field form completion

Median conversion rate on organic traffic is 4%

Page 1 of SERPs not out of reach for most marketers

Organic search plays minor role in total lead volume

Organic search yields mixed results for lead quality, with some standouts

Free analytics solutions are the most widely used

Marketer insights on using analytics to optimize SEO performance

Chapter 4: Planning and Tracking Budgets (pg.75-100)

Biggest budget increases expected in inbound marketing

Half of marketing budgets go to online marketing, on average

PPC, SEO and Website take big share of online marketing budget

Staff salaries comprise the largest portion of total SEO budgets

Budgets earmarked for SEO programs

SEO budgets expected to stay the same or grow

Marketer insights on the value returned from SEO budget invested

Chapter 5: Integrating Social Media and SEO (pg.100-118)

Rankings and links are top goals for social integration

Blogs considered most effective social media platform

Inbound marketing lead sources are growing in importance

Inbound leads cost 66% less than outbound leads, on average

Marketer insights on achieving results from social media and SEO integration

Chapter 6: The Importance of Content in a Search Marketing Strategy (pg.119-132)

Web pages and social media are the most used content products

Many content products require high level of time, effort, expense

Customer reviews considered the most effective content product

Chapter 7: Capitalizing on Local Search (p.133-162)

Local search viewed as having positive impact on objectives

Many still have no local business listing on search engines

Many local business listing tactics are not being put into play

Optimizing for local terms is not commonly practiced by most

Developing local content is top local optimization tactic

Marketer insights on the challenges of optimizing for local search

Marketer insights on successfully optimizing for local search

Chapter 8: Making Sense of Mobile Search (pg.163-176)

Mobile search is considered the least critical

Ad campaigns enabled more often than actually optimized for mobile

Marketer insights on their challenges with mobile search

Marketer insights on their successes with mobile search

Chapter 9: Search Marketing Success Stories (pg.177-182)

Case Briefing: Optimizing early to capture future seasonal traffic lifts

Case Briefing: Finding and testing niche content increases organic traffic 40%

Case Briefing: Content marketing campaign generates surge in traffic

Case Briefing: Turning a YouTube channel into a powerful inbound marketing hub

Case Briefing: Revamped and optimized web content doubles lead conversions

Case Briefing: Using social media boosts leads 30% and revenue 114%

Chapter 10: Agency Perspectives (pg.183-196)

Client investment in SEO is driven by measurable ROI

Agencies expect 72% of clients to increase SEO budgets up to 50%

Majority of client organizations get Page 1 organic rankings

Agencies and clients agree on Top 3 most effective SEO tactics

Agency insights on their successes with SEO campaigns

Agency insights on most effective tactics for improving rankings

Search and Display networks voted most effective by agencies

Despite variety of ad formats, text ads still reign supreme

Social media part of search marketing mix for over 50% of clients

Clients expected to increase usage of Facebook, YouTube, Twitter

Appendix (pg.197-202)

Benchmark survey demographics

Search Engine marketing glossary

An A-to-Z glossary of common search marketing terms