SEO and the Fortune 500

Conductor has just released their study Natural Search Trends of the Fortune 500. Their conclusions? The most powerful companies on earth are doing a slightly better than miserable job positioning their most important keywords in the organic listings (SEO) of major search engines.

• 62% didn’t have a significant SEO presence – at all!
• 97% of the domains studied didn’t have their core keywords in the top organic listings.
• 72% of the Fortune 500 had minimal or non-existent organic listings for their most advertised keywords (PPC).

Organic search engine optimization can have a greater impact for less cost than paid search advertising. Now that's not something you're likely to hear repeated often by a guy who makes his living from paid search. Apparently, it’s not something heard often by the Fortune 500, either.

PPC is quick, cheap, and effective. At least, it was…

There’s obvious value in organic listings on a search engine return page, especially during the research phase of the customer buying cycle. Organic listings are typically perceived as more authentic and less biased than paid ads. Organic may trump paid clicks by 80% in some scenarios. But there’s a problem. SEO takes longer to produce results, the process is often ambiguous, and the results difficult to distinguish from other variables. In contrast, PPC is quick, cheap, and effective. At least, it was cheap.

The trend has been to move marketing budgets from media such as print to online advertising. That trend is likely to accelerate in the current economic environment. PPC inventory will become increasingly expensive. Relying solely upon paid search may become a strategy of diminishing returns, especially if it cannibalizes your SEO efforts.

See also The Synergy of SEO & PPC

Technorati Tags: SEO,Fortune 500,PPC,organic search,natural search,paid search,search trends,Charles Thrasher