Over the last few years, those in the digital marketing space have experienced a seismic shift in the way businesses approach the web.
Whereas once the Internet was seen as the realm of IT geeks, it is now common for marketing managers to be heavily involved in the planning and implementation of online marketing activities, even to the point of learning to speak the lingo.
However, one area of online advertising has always struggled to secure its share of the marketing mix; SEO.
SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) has often been classified by businesses as being stuck somewhere between a website maintenance item and a legitimate marketing activity. That was, up until now.
Over the last six months, Reload Media has conducted a SEO Survey for business, and the results make for interesting reading.
79% of Queensland businesses surveyed now see SEO as part of their marketing mix, and only 14% of Queensland businesses have never undertaken any SEO in the past, down from 37% at the same time last year.
About this time last year, around 16% of businesses had no idea how they were positioned in the search engines, with that figure reduced to just 11% in 2009.
So whilst it appears that SEO has now become a legitimate part of the marketing mix, there’s still a way to go before it gets its fair share of the marketing budget, although the recent global economic meltdown may have helped its cause.