Chris has a nice write up of a SEMPO (Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization) report.
The report had both predictable findings and a few surprises. According to the study, the U.S. and Canadian SEM industry has grown from $4 billion to $5.75 billion, with paid placement accounting for 83% of the total spend.
Despite its demonstrated effectiveness and the amount of time and energy search marketers spend discussing organic search engine optimization techniques, SEO accounted for just 11% of overall spending, or $643 million.
What is there to Spend On?
Most of the SEO expenses are not as obvious as the SEM / PPC expenses!
SEO can not REALLY be purchases as a Thing, it requires tenacious analysis for high-level SEOs – and just basic Website Tweaking and link exchanges for casual SEOs.
Link Trading may be the dominant expense in SEO, since Link BUYING techically comes under SEM, and with Inexpensive Automated software that finds link partners, sends requests, and automates the EXCHANGE – SEO does not inherently require that much of an add-on expense.
SEO is basically serviced-based, where you are purchasing someones ongoing “relevant” Analysis.
It requires communication because of its SERPs complexity and Algo capriciousness, you are required to continuosly decipher what some of the most brilliant professional Engineers and Mathmaticians have formulated.
i John, my name ist Ricardo Acevedo, Journalist from La Tercera (www.tercera.cl), a national Newspaper from Chile. We wont to make an interview with you about your book “The Search”. Could you send an email or telephone number to contact?….
thanks
That actually stacks up then. In my experience companies will spend about 10% of what they spend on paid search on organic to account for the fact that the organic market is unpredictable, but none the less essential.
However if you think of that in terms of agency fees for running paid search campaigns of between 7-15% vs direct fees for SEO then the amount being spent with the different agency types is approximately the same.
Its often overlooked that an SEO biased agency with half the ‘turnover’ of a PPC biased agency is still about five times bigger than their competitor in actual fees.