Study: Marketers boost SEO with social media and content, struggle to prove ROI

Remember when SEO strategy meant dreaming up synonyms for your product?

Those were the days.

In 2018, data overload and the difficulty of proving ROI plague SEO practitioners, most of whom are jacks-of-all-trades, working in-house.

A survey of 300+ businesses conducted by Ignite Visibility and Clutch dug deep into SEO attitudes and practices in the business world.

The study found three major takeaways:

1. Paid search and organic SEO efforts are complementary, and most businesses employ both.

2. The dollar value of a strong SEO program is difficult to prove.

3. Social media complements paid and organic SEO efforts.

The dual benefits of SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) generally refers to the methods one uses to improve organic search results, while search engine marketing (SEM) accounts for paid search efforts.

However, the two are intertwined in ways that marketers often ignore. A solid SEO game brings up the quality score of the keywords essential to your company, bringing down the cost of the SEM program. Traffic generated by SEM increases the visibility of a page and offers valuable keyword insights.