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Announcing the 2012 SEO Industry Survey

Rand Fishkin

The author's views are entirely their own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of Moz.

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Rand Fishkin

Announcing the 2012 SEO Industry Survey

The author's views are entirely their own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of Moz.

Back in March of this year, SEOmoz ran an industry survey that saw 6,491 respondents provide detailed answers to 53 unique questions. The survey formally ran from March 21st to May18th. From independent consultants to agency SEOs to in-house marketers, we got to see responses from a wide swath of the industry's demographics. Individuals from more than 100 countries contributed (as you can see below).

 

Country of Residence for SEO Survey Takers

You can now see the results of this survey, including some excellent analysis by our very own Dr. Peter J. Meyers on the site.

Survey Screenshot

Note that on the right-hand column of the survey, you'll see each of the individual sections Pete's analyzed in the formal survey results. You can also find the complete results as well as those from 2010, which shows some fascinating differences.

But, Pete's not the only one who did some data analysis on the survey results :-) In preparation for my webinar with Dharmesh from Hubspot, I looked at something I've been curious about for a while - the differences in salary for in-house vs. agency/consultant marketers. I filtered to just the US/UK/Canada/Australia/NZ for these results, and found it fascinating:

In-house vs. agency salaries

The common wisdom is that marketers at agencies have lower compensation, but a greater ability to build their portfolio and skills for the future. I can't speak to the latter assumption, but I can say that the former seems accurate, at least from this data.

Two final notes - the first, please be aware that SEOmoz is not a professional surveying firm, so our methodology and question formats are likely inferior to those run by formal statisticians. And second, I'd like to give huge thanks to all the organizations who helped support the industry survey, including Outspoken Media, Search Engine Land, Distilled, Hubspot, Search Engine Journal, Techipedia, AimClear, Blueglass, Marketing Pilgrim, and Search Engine Watch.

Thanks to Supporting Organizations

Buried in the data are treasure troves of fascinating information, and I encourage anyone with curiousity to dig around in the full stats and report on any interesting findings. This data is welcome to be used by anyone for private or public consumption (so yes, you can include it in your internal reporting/slide decks if you'd like), but of course, we'd appreciate source citation.

 

P.S. A very special thanks to Dr. Pete, Ashley, Devin, Erica, and Derric from Moz who went above and beyond to make this project happen (and apologies for our delay - funding+Mozcon+Followerwonk have made this a crazy few months!)

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