I'm very excited to announce that we have just put the finishing touches on our second, biennial SEO Industry Survey! We ran our first industry survey in 2008, and learned and shared a lot about the SEO community. This survey follows up on a lot of questions we asked last time, but includes a greater focus on other areas of organic search marketing as well.
With this survey we hope to find out and share with the world:
- Who are the people in the SEO community?
- How do they learn about SEO and sharpen their skills?
- How are companies embracing search marketing?
- Which tools and tactics do people in the industry use to support their SEO and social media efforts?
The survey only takes about 10 minutes, and we will again share the results once we've had time to work through the data.
Prizes!
As an added incentive, we are offering some cool prizes for people who completethe survey, including one 32G iPad! We are also giving away 3 Flip Mino HD Cameras and 10 people will win thier pick of brand new SEOmoz gear. [Obligitory legal disclaimer: Void where prohibited. See our official rules for all the details.] We will announce the winners of the sweepstakes by June 4th. Follow us on Twitter to stay up-to-date.
A Look Back
It will be interesting to see what has changed in the search marketing industry in the past two years. In fact, let's take a look at a few examples from the survey taken in 2008!
Way back in 2008, people thought that Yahoo! was more likely to challenge Google than Microsoft. Nice guess, but, obviously we know now that's not accurate. Ask, Baidu, and Wikia all battled for third place in people's opinion.
Check out this data about the use of nofollow. Since SMX Advanced last year when Matt Cutt's told us that nofollow no longer worked the way we thought for PageRank sculpting, I wonder if these numbers have changed?
Share the Survey!
The survey ends May 21, 2010 (about a month) so tell your friends in the industry about it. The more people that take the survey, the more interesting and valid the results we can share.
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Partners
Many thanks to our friends who are helping to promote the survey over the next month. It's important to get a broad audience from across the industry. Be sure to check them out:
Survey completed, very interested in the results. Maybe you guys should consider giving a couple free "pro" memberships out to some of us that aren't lucky enough to have such accounts. :)
I took it rand ! Thanks.
Great Job
I have get it survey!It is good!
Hi Rand,
I plan to take the survey too.
In the meanwhile, I have a scary BREAKING NEWS for the whole seo community: As of now Coupons.com has lost all of its page 1 rankings for the "coupons" and other major keywords. It might have been banned (or sandboxed).
I hope this has nothing to do with Google employee (Steve Horowitz) joining coupons, Inc as an executive.
I LOVE the prizes!
I just have to say thanks for making more than just US residents eligible for the draw. So so many online prizes leave out the rest of the world, and there are still a few of us out here. So thanks again for being inclusive. It's great to feel wanted!
Probably not eligible to win in New Zealand then either? No worries, look forward to seeing some results and will try and get the survey done.
I'm from The Netherlands... Why can't we win?
I assume there are some legal reasons in the Netherlands that make it difficult. :(
why do we have to wait so long :(
Just curious: the iPad is 3g or Wifi version... to make my Lottery Mini Me being even more dreaming ;)
EDIT UPDATE
Done it... let's see in two months what will come out.
32GB WiFi Version
Great!
Now I know what you were talking about in today's webinar!
It wasn't obvious to me where to include my info so as to sign up toreceive prizes should I win. The last open field at the end of the survey said nothing about adding my name, email, etc. You may want to look into this as I don't think it is as intuitive as it should be.
Since I'm anti-Apple (yes, there really are a lot of us out here), it's no big deal that I didn't get to enter. However, others may have the same issue as I had and may want an iPad. I don't want an iPad, so it's no big deal to me. Let someone else who wants it have it...not that I would have won anyway.
Good questions. Great resources listed. I found myself copying your lists of tools to go check out some of these that I"m not aware of. Thanks for the bonus info.
Rand,
This is great, as always, but given the diverse audience that may be participating, I think it would be very beneficial to break this out into different target audiences.
I have to believe that answers could be skewed greatly between agencies/consultants and site owners/in-house staff. Of course that could probably be broken down even further, but just that segmentation alone would add considerably more value to the resulting data.
Looking forward to the results either way!
Right commented... it would be even more useful, so we could check the difference.
And from an agency point of view understand better which services are mostly to be proposed to businesses with in house SEO to complement their online strategy.
I believe we do have some segmentation questions and we'll certainly break things out by those groups in the results. We're as interested in those types of questions as you are!
LOL,back to the right question
I agree. I was interested in how the results will report variations for users who aren't the primary source for SEO management and research in-house. It seems most of the questions towards the end of the survey were looking for definitive numbers. Hard to accurately report back if you are unsure.
Don't worry about the grand prize, the first prize will do! :)
Wooo iPad :D
Don't care if it's 3G or whatever G.... I want it!!! :) I gotta win it!!! :))
Hehehe... we will see.
survey to win a potential iPad, I like that
A magical Ipad!
Just participated - half way through and then:"Upgrade in ProgressWe are currently in the process of performing scheduled maintenance.We should be finished very shortly. Thanks for your patience!"--> but I will make my way throught :-)
Petra
Done. Apologies for not hanging round here more often of late. Things have been a bit mad of late. Will buy you a beer and fill you in sometime. Best to Geraldine and Si!
Upgrade in Progress We are currently in the process of performing scheduled maintenance.
We should be finished very shortly. Thanks for your patience!
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/NFH8C87
I can only see the start page via cache https://is.gd/bEtqt
When this scheduled maintenance - will get over?
It's SurveyMonkey having some updates - just unlucky timing. They should be done in 20 minutes or less.
A 32GB WiFi iPad...
What I could do with that...
Can you please share the reason for the short list of eligible regions?
Oh oh... as always I didn't read the "conditions". Wonder why Spain or Italy are not listed as eligible countries...
I mean, that didn't stopped me from taking the survey (as it is important no matter a prize or not). But my Lottery Mini Me is quite upset.
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