April 20, 2010
Chart

New Chart: What Search Capabilities are having a Positive Effect?

SUMMARY: We asked search engine marketers to what degree various search capabilities positively affected their PPC or SEO efforts, including local and mobile search.

Take a look at this week’s chart to see how your peers weighed in on search capabilities.
By Jen Doyle, Research Analyst

What’s Working Overall in Search?

View Chart Online
Click here to see a larger, printable version of this chart

Nearly every category ceded some ground this year compared to opinions from the previous year. One notable exception to this trend is social/community-based search. Social media has become an invaluable venue for SEO specialists, PPC ad buyers, PR gurus and viral marketers alike. Other SEO tactics, such as using blogs and press releases to drive organic rankings, continue to score highly. Local and vertical search do well, yet still score lower than they did a year ago.

Notice how not one category received an average score of higher than 6.2 in 2008 or 2009. This is because in most cases, one category in itself is not going to have a significant effect on search performance. It is the integration of these categories that will have a combined impact, as the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

For additional research data and insights about search marketing, download and read the free Executive Summary from MarketingSherpa’s 2009-2010 Search Marketing Benchmark Report.


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