About 22% of the average marketer’s budget will be spent on SEO this year. Zazzle Research, in its State of SEO 2019 report, shows that marketers believe search engine optimization is critical to their success. But they’ve also dropped the budget allocated to this effort by 5% in the past year.

Challenge in Proving Value

Believing in search and proving the value of investing in this marketing effort are two different things. The difficulty in proving value is the reason behind the lack of additional budget commitment for 34% of marketers. At least 61% of businesses say shortages of resources and budget keep them from spending more on SEO. And 26% of marketers believe other formats deliver a better return on investment. About 30% of marketers still can’t measure the impact of the SEO investment on their bottom line.

Knowledge Gap

SEO is not an easy way to drive traffic and revenue. Only 47% of businesses in the Zazzle Research study claim to have expert level SEO ability. Staying current with search engine changes can be challenging, say 41% of survey businesses. Most marketers use Google (83%) and to keep track of what’s happening in the world of SEO; they go to Moz, Google webmasters and Search Engine Land. 

Best SEO Strategies

The top SEO goals for most marketers, including your clients, are increasing traffic (40%) and conversions and sales (31%). In the past, keyword management translated to SEO success. These days, 38% of marketers say keyword saturation isn’t what it used to be. The same percentage also believe exact match anchor text isn’t as useful as it has been in the past. 

Marketers point to the following activities as being most effective for them:

• Creating new content 82%
• Optimizing old content 55%
• Link building 45%

Marketers know they need to develop their own branded rich media content. But 44% say this effort isn’t easy for them. They could use your help on this front.

To understand where your clients stand in the digital media ecosystem, especially with respect to the competition, run a digital audit. Then share the results with them and talk about your digital marketing services. The digital audit tool is available on AdMall from SalesFuel​.com.