New Data on the Value of SEO

Presumably anone who reads this blog really does not need to be convinced of the value of SEO, but chances are that all of you have run into situations where you are trying to explain to someone else of the value of SEO. This is often a very challenging activity. New data from a survey by The Info Tech Group provides some great additional tools for when you need to make this argument. For example, a survey of 94 IT companies showed that companies that put high to very high levels of effort into SEO were far more likely to see traffic growth than sites that put in low to very low SEO effort:

One of the more interesting surveys that The Info-Tech Group did demonstrated that SEO led to increased site stickiness:

The fact that you are 6 times more likely to increase stickiness if you pursue SEO is pretty compelling. I have also believed for a long time that high rankings on key search terms brings a lot of value to your brand. In this survey of 95 IT companies, The Info-Tech Group found that 100% of companies that pursued a very high amount of SEO saw their brand gain value, while only 44% of companies that put very low effort into SEO saw their brand value increase:

Last but not least for companies with investors, another Info-Tech Group showed that SEO has a major impact on impressing stakeholders. Creating a position impression among investors and shareholders is a must. SEO appears to do that quite well:

This data is a great complement to existing industry data. When I am try to impress people on the importance of SEO, I am also likely to show them a chart like this one:

This is an actual traffic chart for a pretty good sized web site, where 92% of their traffic comes from organic SEO (they don’t do PPC on this site). Of course, results vary from site to site, but even for major brands a search engine presence is essential. I discussed this quite a bit more in recent columns on Search Engine Land:

1. Selling the Benefits of SEO in a Large Enterprise
2. Getting Top Management Buy-in for Enterprise SEO

Whatever you do when you are trying to sell the benefits of SEO, make sure you follow the KISS (keep it simple stupid) rule. Before you go in to make your pitch, find out their level of understanding on the topic, and then tune the pitch appropriately. I also believe that it is critical to create visuals that express the concept. Few people learn as well from looking at a sea of text as they do from seeing graphics and charts. Senior managers have a lot of other things on their plate, and are likely to give you limited time to help them understand why they should invest in SEO. Use it well!