Every SEO seems to have different views about the nature of our industry, ranging from “exciting” to “dynamic” to “ever changing”. Despite these conflicting views on the over all nature, it is an undeniable fact that the local online advertising market has grown leaps and bounds in the past few years.
This positive trend is expected to remain the same according to BIA/Kelsey forecast that suggests the local online ad revenues are to double between 2010 and 2015 to a startling US$45 billion in the US market.
Whilst it looks good on paper, in reality what do things really seem like globally for the local SEO providers? The 2011 Local SEO Industry Survey's main aim is to answer this question.
The survey carried out by BrightLocal.com polled over 1,150 local SEOs on various topics that included annual turnover, services and prices, growth predictions and which SEO tasks they enjoyed or disliked the most. Whilst it is an ongoing survey following are the 6 key findings charts that have been put together from the initial responses. For full survey findings click here.
The finding of The 2011 Local SEO Industry Survey are:
1. 31% of SEOs turned over $30,000 or less in the last 12 months
2. Local SEOs handled more clients this year as opposed to last year
3. 31% of the respondents were debutant SEO in 2010
4. Local SEOs are now managing more clients than they did 12 months ago
5. Over 50% of all local SEOs have a new business success rate of 70% or more
6. Over 82% of the local SEOs expect to grow their business in the next year
Additional Findings:
The survey also explores the participant's attitudes towards Social Media and the impact it has in the local business realm. Furthermore, it also asked them about their daily SEO activities and list the one's the liked and the disliked the most. It turns out Link Building and Directory submissions topped the rank for being the most boring tasks. The preferred SEO activities included developing new business leads and self-marketing which consisted of writing blogs, attending conferences, tweeting etc.
Benchmark your business:
As it is an ongoing survey that runs until December 2011 local SEOs still have the opportunity to take part in the survey. SEOs can benchmark themselves directly against similar SEOs; the survey is divided into 5 categories depending on types of SEO:
- Freelance SEO
- Local Agency
- National Agency
- In-House
- Web-designer/Other
So why not be a part of this survey!
