SEO is Very Effective

July 13, 2010

If you ever had doubts about the effectiveness of SEO, this chart should set them at rest.

I’m wondering how SEO didn’t increase traffic for 39% of the websites. Poor quality of optimization would mean a lower amount of traffic, but even so…

Very Effective SEO Objectives by Primary Market

SEO Effectiveness

SEO has proven to be an effective tool in achieving a number of important marketing objectives, making it a universally-beneficial marketing tactic for a wide variety of organizations, regardless of their objectives.

As you can see, increased website traffic is rated as the most effective objective for SEO and increased brand or product awareness is also rated extremely well. However, increased website traffic and awareness are soft metrics that lead to an improvement in bottom-line metrics such as increased online and offline sales revenue.

We feel the effectiveness of SEO in these bottom-line metrics is undervalued because of difficulties in achieving closed-loop tracking from website traffic source to online or offline sales revenue, or low efficiencies of conversion optimization of websites.

B2C organizations are the most likely to perceive SEO as an effective tactic in achieving an increase in lead generation and online sales revenue. This is an indication that these types of organizations are more efficient in closed-loop tracking from website visitor source to leads and online sales revenue generated.