Are You Ignoring SEO?

According to the recent study by SEMPO, only 11% of all search engine marketing budgets is spent on search engine optimization (SEO), with the vast majority (83%) being spent on paid search (or PPC) advertising.

Why is that? Why is SEO largely being ignored by marketers? Whilst there is no doubt that paid search has enormous benefits, SEO can produce a significantly higher return on investment for the same marketing dollars. Also remember that a number one ranking can also convey success and market prominence to potential customers (See related article).

So, is an organic SEO campaign considerably less expensive than PPC to account for such a low share of the total budget? Or, are advertisers more comfortable with paid search (which is very often managed in-house where the ROI is tracked more easily) and ignore SEO altogether?

I assume the majority of those advertisers spending large volumes on paid search are doing so because they simply don't want to change their site in order to accommodate the engines. SEO requires flexibility, and most marketers don't want to hear that additional textual, navigational and/or layout changes are required in order to appeal to the search engine crawlers. And if the marketing department is unwilling to compromise and optimise, any SEO campaign will be ineffective.

I understand that designing a website is a huge investment, and getting the design "just right" and the final product through the internal approvals process can be a long and arduous process. However if that "just right" isn't sufficient for the engines, changes will have to be made or organic rankings (and the resulting traffic and conversions) will suffer as a result. This realisation can very often be difficult for many marketers to process.

Remember good SEO is good marketing. It's about appealing to all users of a site: search engine, human, lynx, WebTV and WAP users. And although forecasters predict that SEO spending will increase, it will never overtake PPC simply because PPC is easy to set up, produces immediate results and changes can be made instantaneously. Whereas SEO campaign is a long-term strategy that demands patience for results, necessitates website changes and is more difficult to track. But in the long run it's more cost-effective program and in the world of escalating bid prices, can you afford to continue to ignore it?