SEO Market Trends 2013A new study has looked at the predicted state of the search engine optimisation market next year. Several areas of change are expected by those in the business as well as within companies that harness third-party services. Here is an overview of what the report found.

Search Engine Watch and Conductor have published the results of their joint survey into the state of SEO and have revealed a number of interesting facts based on answers gleaned from a group of 600 respondents within the business world.

Site owners are always looking to get insights into how the market will develop over the next 12 months and indeed professionals who conduct optimisation as part of their job will also be looking out for opportunities that may arise.

SEO Growth

It seems that, the use of SEO techniques, whether sourced internally from dedicated staff or acquired from the SEO services provider companies, are increasingly seen as valuable to businesses that want to boost their online profiles.

60 per cent of respondents to the study said that they were going to be hiring more people to work on SEO in 2013, with 16 per cent of businesses now actually having a dedicated SEO department rather than integrating this with other teams.

This is good news for experts in the field as well as companies looking to improve their optimisation capabilities, because the growth of the market means that businesses are confident in the importance of SEO and also increasingly aware of their need to invest in this area.

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Executive Understanding

More good news came from the fact that 63 per cent of executives questioned in the survey said that they had increased their grasp on the particulars of SEO in the past year.

This is perhaps a reason for the expected growth of SEO in 2013 and the creation of individual departments targeted at dealing with this concern. Since executive-level understanding of optimisation is growing, there is less resistance among decision-makers to expansion.

Strategy

When it comes to formulating plans for the progress of a business over the next year, SEO is playing an increasingly important role in ensuring that revenue streams are being enhanced and investments are being effectively deployed.

65 per cent of respondents said that the optimisation methods required to improve organic search ranking for a site were being factored into the wider tactics used within a business to allow it to grow and prosper in 2013. This means that more companies will be turning to online information resources in order to inform their decision-making.

In turn, valuable lessons are being learned from SEO that were not previously understood and the market as a whole is benefiting from this strategic approach.

All in all, this survey paints a positive picture of SEO for the near future and generally demonstrates a level of confidence which has not necessarily been in place in the past. Crucially, senior managers and executives are becoming aware of the importance of SEO.