Mapping the SEO Agencies and Client Landscape in 2014 by @krnshrm
A few weeks ago, I published the results of a study about the State of SEO Agencies, which was conducted by my company linkbird during the months of August and September. Based on the same study, I hope to shed some light on the type of agencies and the type of clients prevalent in the online marketing services industry.
I looked at the data about online marketing budgets, proportion of budgets spent on SEO, and the proportion reserved for outsourcing activities. From this analysis three things became clear to me.
The participating agencies were asked to disclose the percentage of their revenues spent on SEO activities for their client. About one-third of the agencies spend 25% or more of their revenue on SEO activities for their client, as these are SEO specialist agencies. Another third of the agencies spend less than 5% on SEO for their clients, these are full-stack online marketing agencies who offer SEO only as a part of their total offering.
All other online marketing agencies fall somewhere between these two extremes, undertaking activities related to search engine marketing, web design, content marketing, social media marketing, analytics, public relations, mobile marketing, and more.
When I looked at the percentage of online marketing budgets that companies spend on SEO activities, I found there are companies that rely heavily on SEO (29%), while others spend only small portion of their online marketing budget on SEO (21%). Based on these statistics, I can express Reliance on SEO as a spectrum, where at one extreme you have marketers who do not focus on SEO, and on the other extreme you have marketers which heavily rely on SEO.
Marketers who spend only a small portion of their only marketing budgets on SEO tend to rely on other methods to reach their objectives. In essence, they employ a holistic approach to online marketing, combining content marketing, online PR, and social media tactics.
Companies which are open to hiring an agency for outsourcing their online marketing activities do so at varying intensities. One in four companies spends less than 5% of their budget on agencies, these companies are makers. In essence, these companies would rather do it themselves and only hire if they lack resources, time, or expertise.
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Mapping the SEO Agencies and Client Landscape in 2014 by @krnshrm