It's been another wild year in search marketing. Mobilegeddon crushed our Twitter streams, but not our dreams, and Matt Cutts stepped out of the spotlight to make way for an uncertain Google future. Pandas and Penguins continue to torment us, but most days, like anyone else, we were just trying to get the job done and earn a living.
This year, over 3,600 brave souls, each one more intelligent and good-looking than the last, completed our survey. While the last survey was technically "2014", we collected data for it in late 2013, so the 2015 survey reflects about 18 months of industry changes.
A few highlights
Let's dig in. Almost half (49%) of our 2015 respondents involved in search marketing were in-house marketers. In-house teams still tend to be small – 71% of our in-house marketers reported only 1-3 people in their company being involved in search marketing at least quarter-time. These teams do have substantial influence, though, with 86% reporting that they were involved in purchasing decisions.
Agency search marketers reported larger teams and more diverse responsibilities. More than one-third (36%) of agency marketers in our survey reported working with more than 20 clients in the previous year. Agencies covered a wide range of services, with the top 5 being:
More than four-fifths (81%) of agency respondents reported providing both SEO and SEM services for clients. Please note that respondents could select more than one service/tool/etc., so the charts in this post will not add up to 100%.
The vast majority of respondents (85%) reported being directly involved with content marketing, which was on par with 2014. Nearly two-thirds (66%) of agency content marketers reported "Content for SEO purposes" as their top activity, although "Building Content Strategy" came in a solid second at 44% of respondents.
Top tools
Where do we get such wonderful toys? We marketers love our tools, so let's take a look at the Top 10 tools across a range of categories. Please note that this survey was conducted here on Moz, and our audience certainly has a pro-Moz slant.
Up first, here are the Top 10 SEO tools in our survey:
Just like last time, Google Webmaster Tools (now "Search Console") leads the way. Moz Pro and Majestic slipped a little bit, and Firebug fell out of the Top 10. The core players remained fairly stable.
Here are the Top 10 Content tools in our survey:
Even with its uncertain future, Google Alerts continues to be widely used. There are a lot of newcomers to the content tools world, so year-over-year comparisons are tricky. Expect even more players in this market in the coming year.
Following are our respondents' Top 10 analytics tools:
For an industry that complains about Google so much, we sure do seem to love their stuff. Google Analytics dominates, crushing the enterprise players, at least in the mid-market. KISSmetrics gained solid ground (from the #10 spot last time), while home-brewed tools slipped a bit. CrazyEgg and WordPress Stats remain very popular since our last survey.
Finally, here are the Top 10 social tools used by our respondents:
Facebook Insights and Hootsuite retained the top spots from last year, but newcomer Twitter Analytics rocketed into the #3 position. LinkedIn Insights emerged as a strong contender, too. Overall usage of all social tools increased. Tweetdeck held the #6 spot in 2014, with 19% usage, but dropped to #10 this year, even bumping up slightly to 20%.
Of course, digging into social tools naturally begs the question of which social networks are at the top of our lists.
The Top 6 are unchanged since our last survey, and it's clear that the barriers to entry to compete with the big social networks are only getting higher. Instagram doubled its usage (from 11% of respondents last time), but this still wasn't enough to overtake Pinterest. Reddit and Quora saw steady growth, and StumbleUpon slipped out of the Top 10.
Top activities
So, what exactly do we do with these tools and all of our time? Across all online marketers in our survey, the Top 5 activities were:
For in-house marketers, "Site Audits" dropped to the #6 position and "Brand Strategy" jumped up to the #3 spot. Naturally, in-house marketers have more resources to focus on strategy.
For agencies and consultants, "Site Audits" bumped up to #2, and "Managing People" pushed down social media to take the #5 position. Larger agency teams require more traditional people wrangling.
Here's a much more detailed breakdown of how we spend our time in 2015:
In terms of overall demand for services, the Top 5 winners (calculated by % reporting increase - % reporting decrease were):
Demand for CRO is growing at a steady clip, but analytics still leads the way. Both "Content Creation" (#2) and "Content Curation" (#6) showed solid demand increases.
Some categories reported both gains and losses – 30% of respondents reported increased demand for "Link Building", while 20% reported decreased demand. Similarly, 20% reported increased demand for "Link Removal", while almost as many (17%) reported decreased demand. This may be a result of overall demand shifts, or it may represent more specialization by agencies and consultants.
What's in store for 2016?
It's clear that our job as online marketers is becoming more diverse, more challenging, and more strategic. We have to have a command of a wide array of tools and tactics, and that's not going to slow down any time soon. On the bright side, companies are more aware of what we do, and they're more willing to spend the money to have it done. Our evolution has barely begun as an industry, and you can expect more changes and growth in the coming year.
Good info as always, but we should remember - at least this is my perception - that this survey has some biases that should be remembered:
Because of point 2, the best thing is that we have the Raw data to download and analyze, so that we can go seeing the data per segments (i.e.: what tools more experienced Search Marketers use vs juniors)... a lot of fun for data lovers :D
---- SOME DATA ----
thats right, a lot of people i know in europe know moz, but dont use it. Fun for Data lovers, I take a deep jump into it and try to search my answer.
Data Lovers? You mean us right? ;)
Which is surprising because wouldn't moz pro be 'cheaper' in europe?
cheaper is relative like your quotes show
99 dollar are 89,45 Euro today, but at the end its 99 dollar...
The costs could be different from month to month and most europe tools are 99 Euro per month (beginner price like moz is) - so yes it could be a cheaper in that point of view =)
Completely agree with you Gianluca
Thank you so much Sir Gianluca. That helps me understand it better :-)
I'm surprised that only 30% of respondents are female.
Agreed. Services such as HARO are really not popular here in the UK, so would never be in the top 10.
Kind of funny (timing) that G+ is reported as one of the top 3 social networks... I wonder if digital marketers/SEOs just said it's a top focus in the survey since there's been SO much push for it with its influence on rankings (personalized, at least) - like, "Ugh. I think G+ is a waste of time, but I'm an SEO & it's supposedly great for SEO so I better mark it down as a top focus." Or maybe I just outed myself. ;)
I absolutely wondered the same thing! =)
I think it might also be a bias of ourselves and our clients. In my experience, G+ is dominated by marketers and tech people -- and not much else (at least compared to other social networks). So, if anyone works in marketing or tech, then we need to be on G+. And that's probably a lot of people taking the survey.
Those interested in Kim Kardashian are probably elsewhere (like Facebook and Instagram). :)
"Those interested in Kim Kardashian are probably elsewhere (like Facebook and Instagram). :)" You sir is a genius! Looooollll
I always act like it's important, while I continue to check it about twice a month. It's like we just hear "Google" in the name and lose all perspective.
Right there with ya! PS. I can't help but see the "Top Agency Services" pie charts as Pac-Man. haha.. nom nom nom.
Pacman Dying Sound Effect
Hello Sheena,
I would definitely agree with you and even google thought to close the google plus social network. I am surprised too, when seen Google + on third place in the list, may be it is because the current trend by SEO's as they believe it helps in ranking and Google+ links counts in webmasters backlink profile as well.
Anyway, Peter Sir, great content as usual, keep posting :)
Thanks
Nearly half the respondents were in-house, yet you wouldn't know it if you go to pretty much any industry conference when it's a conveyor belt of agency speakers (often the same old faces too).
As a general reply, we all know that usually the majority of the attendees of any conference is composed by in-house (eg: MozCon)
Edit: Previous comment edited so this comment now looks out of place. Leaving for reference.
I'm sorry I don't understand your point. I'm saying the vast majority of industry events have speakers from agency side, and you responded saying most of the attendees (i.e. delegates) of one particular conference are in-house. I don't understand the point you are making here, I appreciate English is not your first language but it appears you're not talking about the same point as I am!
Sorry... it was a misunderstanding :D... in fact I was convinced I deleted my own comment when I finally understood yours, but something must have gone wrong (I was on mobile).
Anyway, I don't think it is necessarily true that in every conference we see mostly in-agency speakers. At least, I was lucky enough of attending to a good number of events with a mixed panel of speakers, being not few in-house.
This is a disconnect I've seen more and more, and I think it amounts to this - consultants and agency marketers naturally tend to do more sales and marketing for their own firms. They have to be out there, building relationships. In-house marketers need knowledge, but are trying to get the job done, and so they often aren't as vocal, don't publish blog posts, don't speak as much, etc. Talking to audience (such as at MozCon), I think there are a lot more in-house people at conferences than we usually think, but agency people are naturally more visible.
I'm sure that is largely the reason too. It's a shame though because (as an in-house practitioner) I know I can share any successes I have had (which isn't nearly as many as I would like!!) without fear I am "giving away" any secrets, because I'm not in danger of losing any clients. No clients here... only senior management and/or finance departments to placate!
I've spoken a couple of times publicly, but it is such a time-sink to prepare even a half decent presentation that apart from the "personal brand building" (yuck - I hate that term!) then it becomes increasingly difficult to justify the time.
The reason us in-house folk often stick to the shadows at conferences is that we're afraid we'll be sales-pitched to within an inch of our lives by dozens of baying agencies if we mingle too much!
In my experience, bigger brands often have onerous NDAs and don't want their in-house people making a peep about anything that could be adopted by their competition. I've asked several in-house marketers to speak at small conferences and none were okayed to do so by the company.
Yeah, that's been my experience, too. Plus, there's not nearly the incentive - most see the down-side as hugely outweighing the up-side. Notable exceptions, of course, like Disney Interactive, but those definitely feel like exceptions.
I was on the agency side in the past and am now in-house. I've seen both sides.
Agencies need to speak at conferences for the exposure. A lot -- but not all -- of the time, the only real difference between two agencies that do X is the people in the agencies. The selling point is the people. The agencies with the big names tend to get the clients.
On the in-house side, it's different. Take my startup. We sell our product to a certain set of audiences, and digital marketers (to my company) are a lower-priority audience compared to others. So, we attend, speak at, and sponsor conferences that are attended by the people who would be interested in the product. We don't need to impress anyone else except for potential customers.
Marketing-specific conferences are less of a priority on the in-house side for a few reasons. (Unless you're selling a product that marketers can use.) My impression is that higher-ups (in general, not in my company) think that we can learn everything we don't already know for free on the Internet or by talking to people over say, e-mail, and not in person. So, what's the benefit (in their eyes)?
I think the proof is that many marketing conferences have in-house specific sessions -- "here's what in-house people have to say." The fact that in-house people can have a session unto themselves is proof that they are much more rare than agency people.
So content creation is one of the most requested services, but comes nearly "last" as a service...nice opportunity here
Sorry, not sure where you're seeing "nearly last" - content creation ended up high-priority on most of the questions.
I'm surprised for big market share of Moz Pro.
Looks as another great win for Moz team? Cheers!
Keep in mind that the survey is launched/promoted on Moz, so, while I'd love to think those numbers are true, there's a clear pro-Moz bias in the data.
Great market share for Moz! Woo hoo! All great tools and nothing really stood out to me except for the request for Analytics Services. I work at a full service marketing agency and no one has specifically asked for "Analytics Services". We create reports and they like to know what is going on with their site, but it's never an in depth analytics review or anything like that. Is creating reports the same thing as "Analytics Services"?
I was also surprised at Google+ being up there with social networks especially with talks of Google closing down G+.
It's also great to see Conversion Rate Optimization make some gains. People are starting to realize that if they just increased the conversion of their website rather than trying to flood it with traffic, they could double the revenue with half the effort (in my eyes, at least - I could be wrong - maybe 3/4 the effort).
Great report and great insights!
Yeah, I think "analytics" tends to be tricky, because it encompasses a lot. We all do it, and all of our clients want it, to some degree, but most of us don't think of ourselves or our companies as being analytics-focused. It's part of everything we do.
Hi Peter,
I am not surprised that "Analytics" made it to the list. Our agency in South Africa has seen an increase in clients wanting us to dig deep in GA. Reports are becoming more in-depth, but no complaining :)
Thanks for the awesome post btw!
I too was surprised to see Analytics Services ranking as high as it did. With the amount of competition in the marketplace right now and the flood of content being dumped online, I really expected to see things like competitive research / analysis and content strategization rank higher. Although perhaps neither of those was even an option; I can't recall even though I did take the survey.
Hi, Dr.Peter
I am really surprised with the survey data for most of the section. like content creation at forth, web development at fifth, Google+ at No.3 !
In 2016, I am sure companies will look for 'stop referral spam services', 'Mobile Optimization Services' , 'Neighborhood E commerce services' and many other. Things gonna very challanging for sure.
I think CRO, Analytics (Tag Manager), Site speed and growth hacking will rock in coming years !!
Growth Hacking!!!! NOOOOO!!!! Isn't it just a combo of Analytics, SEO, Content and Social? Or what we already do since a long time but with a fancy name?
Oh, no -- growth hacking is what my overall department does at my startup. It's essentially the integration of Product and Marketing Departments into a single unit. It almost always applies only to the niche of tech products (and usually SaaS ones).
Ryan Holiday's book gives a great overview, but I'll summarize:
1. Create a Minimum Viable Product (MVP).
2. Get a core set of early testers / users to establish Product-Market fit. Show them the MVP and quiz them on what they like, what they don't like, what would be more useful, what is not necessary, and so on. Revise the product, get more feedback, revise the product, get more feedback, and so on until it is perfect.
3. Incorporate sharing and growth naturally in the product. Push new users to refer it to friends (for a discount or something). Put social sharing buttons inside the UX / UI. And so on.
4. Experiment with the roughly 20 different ways to get "traction" in order to see what gets the most users quickly at the lowest cost. (Maybe PPC, maybe PR, maybe many different things.)
Repeat, repeat, repeat.
That's super informative and interesting.. Just writing a summary and it's fascinating to see:
For an SEO person, Google rules the world! Google is generally the most important search engine.. Google's Search Console the most used tool, Google Alerts the most used tool for content, Google Analytics the top analytics tool, and so the top activity and overall top service requested is Google Analytics..
Wow! .. must buy shares in Google!.. :o)
thats how it is ... why work with other tools when mother-g is providing a lot of these.
Want to rank in Google? Work with Google :)
Awesome data! Just 50% of the tools are used in germany. Is there a tool in the states that alerts you when someone made an unplanned change on title tags, internal links, meta robots, href lang, content and so on? And also provides a backup of the html files? So you can analyse and fix all errors before you lose your rankings. We provide such a tool in germany (https://www.url-monitor.com) and didn't found such a tool yet in the usa. Especially large companys often do not see all the changes, until they lost rankings. Thanks for your answers!
Very Useful Info, Thanks for sharing - Peter.
Happy to know that SEO is still tops the chart of agency services. Helps the individuals to concentrate on upcoming most wanted skills like CRO and all.
Great information!
Amazing and interesting numbers comes up through this insight survey. love to see few tools are the best among all of us.
Oh my gosh...what an ugly button for download raw data. I Definitely understand why CRO is growing. :D
This is great information as a user survey. It could totally be used to help us be better marketers. Maybe there are content creation opportunities on the horizon for the items that gained this year over last? Like google analytics api reports?
Great survey learned a lot of things.
Thanks
I think that social media marketing are growing up and I situate it in the second position only behind the seo position marketing. Trought the social content we can obtain miles of loyal followers to our website but you can obtain a lot of people that are not interested in your blog if you don't segment it on the best way.
I like this post! Good and thanks Peter.
Great information mozfriend!!
Loved the survey. Looking back at when I started SEO years ago, it's amazing to see the direction things have moved. There's a few tools and ideas I've been able to gain from this survey and am exciting to adding them into my current strategies. Yet another great post and survey from Moz!!!!!
Thanks for sharing ,really it's one of the most useful post and help me lots.
Its grate survey.detail shared with accurate survey figure/Ratio. And still SEO Services 94 % in 2015 .detailed breakdown of how we spend our time in 2015 on internet marketing this information is very helpful for marketing expert.
this is the most useful post.
There is some stuff that I have not really listened to. I was surprised because there google alerts in the tool contents.
Thanks for Document
Very surprised that SimilarWeb is not included in the results, maybe next year add another graph of - competitive analysis tools.
Sorry - by the time we get the final post done, the actual list of tools was usually created a few months earlier (takes a while to do all this). Definitely need to sort out where SimilarWeb fits next time around.
We'll be sure to include y'all next year. I think your popularity is pretty high and rising in the SEO world, and I'd love to see us specifically examine keyword and competitive research tools.
That would be awesome :-)
Thanks for the great survey! I think this is a good trend, content creation should be emphasized even more in the future. After all, the user is king ;-)
Thanks Dr. Pete, great stuff as usual! Some very interesting insights there and very positive for SEOs including smaller outfits. I'd say the results pretty much tie in with my experience i.e. more interest from clients on ROI and results.
So its been proved that SEO and SMO demands are more in market as compare to other.
I think that the information is very full. I have been very helpful all the information. Thanks ;)
Thank you! I'm not surprised that content creation is the second most requested service, because content is just everywhere. The word count is also getting much higher per average article. I can only wonder where it will be within the next five years.....
Keeping in view current industry situation and my experience of working with small to medium size clients; I think Top Agencies Services will move more towards Social media marketing and share of Search Engine Marketing will decline in 2016.
More and more people are now joining social media platforms and hence they will become the top marketing platforms for businesses. Social Media Marketing might go up in Top 5 activities and Top 5 Services Requested in 2016.
For big agencies trends can be different because they have big marketing budget and team behind them.
Thanks Dr. Peter for sharing Online Marketing Industry Survey.
Thanks for sharing such great info for marketing.Really its very creative and glad to read.Hope to see more useful information soon.
As usual, worth reading every single line Dr. Pete,
Working as a digital marketing agencies, SEO and SEM both are most frequent and highly offered services (as we also do the same) and as the survey says that both SEO and SEM are top agency services. But surprisingly, Analytic service is most demanded or requested services according to the survey and non of our client bothering about this service as we are working with many potential clients from last few years.
I think it's important for the clients to think beyond rankings, and this survey can be a good source of knowledge for out of the U.S.A based clients that what to demand and what to measure. ( as Gianluca says that it's mostly based on U.S.A. marketers).
Thanks for the detailed and insightful survey Dr. Pete.
SEO world is always changing and sometime it is hard to follow. Thank you for good informations.
Great survey and very useful. Thanks
Thanks Dr. Peter J. Meyers for the awesome survey!!, it's really useful information, even I also use that kind of ways and work procedure for my client site. And thanks for my clarification for my work.
I just little surprised, as like the same "Vishal mehta". Regrding content creation at forth, web development at fifth, Google+ at No.3 !
Thanks again Dr. Pete
Ramesh Yadav
Congrats Moz for conducting this insightful survey and dominating the overall market. It's really good to see SEO is still hanging on first position and surprisingly Google+ is the third most used Social media platform and people gives this much importance to G+ trends.
Is it possible to know the country wise breakdown? Like what % of particular country participated in?
Umar,
Gianluca has already shared these numbers. FYI
---- SOME DATA ----
It’s just awesome!!<3
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