Search Engine Marketing Growing Globally by Nearly 40 Percent

The fourth annual edition of Marketing Sherpa’s Search Marketing Benchmark Guide has revealed impressive growth in Search Engine Marketing trends over the past year. SEM has grown by 31 percent in the US and by 39 percent globally.

The benchmark report is compiled from surveys completed by over 3,000 search marketers in July this year, both agency employed and freelance. It includes statistics on cost per click, conversion rates, SEO versus PPC and more. The report also charts growth rates and ROI figures for search marketing versus other marketing tactics.

According to Manoj Jasra at Search Engine Guide (who has seen a copy of the report), the main highlights are:

–> search budgets are increasing by double-digit percentages for many marketers, although feedback shows that many of those increases are in anticipation of rising prices, not a desire to extend their search engine marketing reach.

–> More emphasis on natural search has put pressure on many marketers to improve their own sites, while smaller companies are feeling the pinch in paid search/keyword price inflation.

–> The temptation to bring SEM in-house is growing stronger for many marketers, but the number getting outsourced help has actually increased over the past 12 months. This year it has become more common to use outsourced assistance as part, not all, of the overall SEM effort.

–> marketers don’t seem as worried about click fraud this year, but that’s probably more to do with less media focus on the issue than any real changes in click fraud trends.

Originally Syndicated via RSS from SiteProNews Blog