More from Jeff: Just letting everyone know I've added a link on "Recording your response..." page to let you retry to submit your response if it is taking too long. It was a change in the javascript file, so you may have to do a shift+refresh to see the update.
We have previously mentioned a few times on our blog that we were working on an SEO survey, and I'm pleased to say that today we're ready to launch it. Behold, the SEO Industry Survey in all its green-hued glory!
The purpose of the survey is to collect anonymous information about search marketers, which we will aggregate and publicly share with the search community. The survey is 51 questions long, and upon completion you will be entered in a drawing to win an iPhone (or a $400 gift certificate to Amazon.com if you already own an iPhone).
The more completed surveys we get, the better our data will be, meaning our findings will be of greater interest to the search community. Be sure to take the survey! All of your information will remain anonymous, and once we receive enough responses, we'll announce when we'll publish the data.
Just wanted to address some of the concerns. Yes - writing surveys is hard. We worked a lot on this one and even recruited 20 or so beta testers from around the industry to review prior to launch (and made lots of changes based on their feedback). It's still not perfect, and we're not a professional survey design company, but I'm hopeful that the data collected will still be extremely valuable and interesting.
Also - I know the survey and the entire SEOmoz site is very slow right now. We're experiencing something akin to a constant front-page "Digg"ing, due to traffic to the survey and some folks who were hammering our tools (we've blocked those now). It's a bit of a perfect storm.
We made some mistakes here and I do apologize - within the next few hours the survey should be much more usable and with nearly a thousand completed surveys already, we're looking at a remarkable scope.
BTW - I personally agree with the frustrations with the large vertical top banner and the separate page loads. On second glance, it would have been wiser to address these issues. Sadly, they didn't come up in our internal testing or the private beta testing, but we'll certainly keep it in mind for next time. Thanks!
Rand, hope your team's not dismayed by any little irks in the comments. It's an excellent survey and held my attention through all 51 questions. I'm confident I'm not speaking for just myself when I say well done to all involved.
I'd just like to add that we've just received our 1000th survey response! Thanks everyone, especially those of you who dealt with the slowness earlier today.
Huzzah.
You're welcome, don't be sorry, you can just owe me a drink ;)
For all you people 'breezing through this survey'. Are you NOT getting one question per page load? Otherwise I certainly do NOT consider this method anywhere near what it would be like to breeze through a survey. I'm going to write this in the kindest way I possibly can, but in terms of user interaction this was definitely one of the worst thought through surveys I have ever taken (and there's been a few)! Okay, so some of the questions were a bit weird and answers didn't always make sense. I'm used to that.
Where this survey ended up frustrating the heck out of me was:
a. 1 question per page with a load in between each answer (sometimes over 30 seconds). Okay, so the load might influence the lag. If you put 2x the questions on a page, you get half the load. If you put 5x questions on the page load goes down by 80%. If you think you are going to have a server issue, for crying out load, put more questions on a page. This survey should long be used by web designers and developers to illustrate how AJAX is certainly NOT always what is best for users! In this case it adds unnecessary time to what would otherwise be a relatively quick survey.
b. Scrolling. Okay, branding is important for you. I get that. Why is it still important on question 2/3/4... of the survey? That huge green banner at the top means that even on a 15.4 inch macbook pro screen I have to scroll to read the complete answers to every question posed. Without it, it'd probably still be half the questions and annoying, but at least it would only be half as annoying. I feel really sorry for anyone using 800x600 and trying to take this.
c. Design. It's clear some time went into the design. But whoever designed might want to think twice about butchering common standards. Stretching those radios is just not intuitive behaviour.
It's mainly points a and b. I probably wouldn't have cared about c if I wasn't so annoyed by the time I hit question 10 with points a and b. Anyway, it did look nice and was kind of slick the first time the ajax effect appeared. There just should have been a lot more middle ground between common sense and web 2.0 niftiness imo.
I agree with you that more questions per page would improve the survey. But eh, really sweet nonetheless.
I especially like the graphic at the top of the survey. Makes it feel super legit. Semozzers you guys are awesome with graphics...makes the site feel super official.
Sweet! That should be our new tagline.
SEOmoz: We're Super Legit.
or
SEOmoz: Our Site Feels Super Official.
2Legit2Quit.
Hey heyyyyyyyyyyy!
I have to be honest: I'm quite happy that the survey keeps freezing for other respondents. It just means I have a better chance of winnnig the iPhone. :)
well, you could at least give me a thumbs up then. ;)
Hahaha....diiiirty.
Surprisingly the 51 questions went quick. Didn't know what to expect at first 51 seemed like a long one, but after going through the whole thing, it really was easy, didn't take much time and there's a chance to win a prize, not bad. I like the green graphics and the AJAX functinality is nifty too, nice work.
Oh, and I Sphunn it, https://sphinn.com/story/25771
This should provide quite a bit of insight into our world, I can see the potential, good job mozzers, thanks for reporting it to us Rebecca.
Oh, for the industry events question on which conferences you attend, the list is missing the SEOmoz Training Seminar!!
just sphinned it. u sure beat me to it.
Yes, but did you stumble it? I bet my stumble sends more traffic than your sphinn so ner-ner-ner-ner-ner :-p
Hehe. Yeah, don't have a very popular SU page, so bet you're right there. So that just leaves Facebook, Digg, Delicious, Mixx, Gooruze, Reddit and 50 others. I'll be sure to add a note to your SU review though.
Agreed, the SEOmoz seminar deserves a place along with the others (SES, SMX, PubCon, HighRankings, Ad:Tech) :D
Nice job putting this together... can't even imagine the challenge. Surveys are challenging, they are never as cut and dried as you think or hope.
Biggest challenges that I saw, at least for me:
Either way, kudos for just attempting, and as more of these get put together, feedback is received, they will only continue to get better.
cheers
I agree with the participation in social media question. Seems like you listed only three extremes: active, just reading and do not participate at all. I am personally registered on most of them but login there once a week or once a month (like Myspace) but had to choose between 'don't use at all' and 'I am not registered there'.
Overall - great survey - I liked design, questions and usability!
The survey froze at around the 2/3 mark - sorry at that point there was no way to tell how far I'd gotten.
Sorry about that--we're having a bit of a lag due to the massive traffic increase. We're working on getting the site and the survey to run as smoothly as possible.
Yeah, happened to me twice, hehe. I gave up and figured I'd just wait 'till later.
After 4 attempts (2 yesterday, 1 last night, 1 today) I officially give up. *Sigh* Don't say I didn't try though! I'd have loved to participate hehe. And I can't wait to see the results.
I'm sorry, PiperTax. :( Don't shun us!
Yeah - At first I couldn't even get the site to load and now it just hangs after the question about where I'm from
I got 3/4 way through and it froze - left for a meeting and came back and it's still "processing my answer" or something. I guess I have to start over :)I'll have to save the do-over for a 3am insomniac task~Carrie
So when do we get the badge to put on our sites that says, "I took part in the inaugural SEOmoz Industry Survey"? ;)
That survey had some great questions in there. Lots of stuff that I can't wait to see the results on.
Great job mozzers!
BTW - WeBuildPages has made most of their tools (neat-o, strong subpages, etc.) part of a Ninjas video series that costs just under $3000 so the fact that a lot of people may have used those before doesn't necessarily mean that they still do. $3000 is a little on the high side for a backlink checker...
Cool survey guys!
For the question, "What was your companies income" I assume some of the options were missing the "million" notation? Unless some people really only made $10 last year :)
This is one of the better surveys I've taken in a long time. was it a survey package or customer written in Cake?
What will be most intersting is the commentary surrounding the results and whether or nto you are able to establish a margin of error.
I would have like to see a question that asked how long you practived SEO before you began acheiving certain levels of income. (i.e. how many months to $25K annualized, to $50K, to $100K and up...
Liked the survey a lot- really looking forward to the results - although changing my salary into dollars took a bit of thought -
and don't know if it will be translated well - is the US job market the same as the UK's? Maybe linking that to the "what country do you work in" might provide more value? ie a "heres what seo's earn at various skill levels/experience levels/country levels"
other than that great! Although maybe a question on workloads - how much: reporting/analytics/optimising/strategy/programing/training/research/presenting do you do??
Done and done. Now where's my iPhone. :)
You may wish to clarify the "income" question. The "salary" at my job is much less than my "income" from search related projects. And I'm surely not the only one using SEO knowledge to make considerable income on side projects.
writing a perfect survey is impossible.
- I included all my income, still poor.
.rb
rbowles - "still poor" - sounds like you need to upgrade to premium membership :) (sorry, couldn't resist)
Great concept, great design. Leave it to SEOMoz to greate something like this, thanks!
Looking forward to the results. It would be nice to see something similar broken down into some other sectors of SEM - PPC, Affiliate etc. Just a though.
Firstly - sh!t hot implementation. Incredibly smooth, nice expanding boxes and links and buttons and all kinds of wizadry! Never jerky or confusing or slow or anything so good job on that.
Secondly - Not enough trick questions! Was expecting more of these :-)
Thirdly - some good questions in there and overall I liked it, although some of the questions were a little vague, i.e. where you're asking which of these metrics influences the google search results - there are many many ways it can influence the search results without influencing rankings for example!
It'll be interesting to see the results!
So SEOmoz guys and gals, you tell me....
I was born in Turkey (located in Europe & Asia (or Middle East) (and now live in Chicago) , My mom has ukranian, Romanian and Turkish in her and my dad has Syrian and Saudi Arabian in him. So what ethnicity am I??? Caucasian or Middle Eastern. My point is, I don't get what race has to do with SEO and most of us could not properly answer that government requirement question from 1950s as many of us are all so mixed nowadays.
Aw Jeez, Mert, we're not trying to do profiling here, we just thought it'd be interesting to find out how racially/ethnically diverse the Search Industry is.
It's for demographic purposes--just getting an idea of what sort of characteristics (age, sex, ethnicity) make up the search industry.
what's wrong with the "i'd rather not say" option?
I'd rather not say.
Sorry I guess you can pick more than one option. Never mind. Apologies again.
Hey- no apologies necessary. Like you, I'm a pure-bred mutt... and delighted to be one. Keep checking those boxes :)
Mert,
From the sound of it, the real question is:
"How the hell do you ever get through airport security?"
;)
Nice implementation but !
- The headers
should float with the choices as the page scrolls, that way you can remember what the exact choices meant.
i just tried taking the survey, got into the 40s and it froze up on me, i'll try again later.
oh my god! do you have a guy sat in your office typing in the answers as they come through? I'm impressed to say i made it through the survey. Just. Now, send me my iphone!
The range of responses for Q2 ‘What is your ethnicity?’ are not wide enough. I’d actually prefer to tell you, but the only applicable response for me is ‘Rather not say’. Can’t you use a less US-centric range of responses, considering the international nature of your readership and the net as a whole? Btw what is ‘East Indian’ supposed to mean, as opposed to Indian, anyway? Also, please don't lump the rest of the world together as one group outside of the US and Canada - it's quite annoying.
I felt this a little bit too, but shrugged it off. Sometimes the advantage this gives to US users is not as big as the disadvantage (and unintended alienation) to international readers. I guess you tailored it to your largest demographic however.
Also, Asian/Pacific Islander doesn't translate internationally - in UK terms Asian is the ethnicity of Pakistan, Kashmir, India, Bangladesh and surrounding territories.
However, tis your site and you're free to do as you please. It's still a cracking survey and I'm anxious to see the results :)
Also note that Jane--blond haired, blue eyed Jane--is a "Pacific Islander," as she hailes from New Zealand, an island in the Pacific.
Very very cool survey guys :)Juct about it complete it!
Great questions there BTW..
Congratulation for the survey! it is great and I cannot wait for the results to be published.
Following a similar idea, SEO Sydney Blog has also released a similar one dedicated to Australia and New Zealand.
If you are a search marketer working in Australia or New Zealand, please feel free to take the survey.
Thanks again SEOMOZ and see you when you get to OZ for SMX Sydney!
I took this survey and no iphone was ever drawed. This was bogus to make you and me answer the survey. I asked several times for the result of the iPhone drawing but just received rotten excuses. I will send this site story to that fake contests blog. They will take care of them.
Blobba, we picked a winner and contacted him privately. Since the survey was anonymous, we weren't going to publicly announce who won the iphone because that would violate the anonymity of the survey. If you weren't contacted, you didn't win.
Took the survey yesterday night, I'll wait eagerly to see the results. I'll also give an idea on what works and what not :D
FYI - I think the server crash took down part of the SEOMoz market place. None of the tabs seem to work, and now hearing this (server overload due to the survey) makes me think they may be related.
I hope to get to the survey today.
Cool idea. I just finished mine.
Not sure about some of the questions, but I'm sure the end result will be interesting.
The survey was impressive as you provided the valuable information about the popular blogs, association, social media marketing avenues to the users. This will help them to explore and gain knowledge about it
Cool Survey! Persian is not a language. The language is Farsi. ;)
Oops, thanks for clarifying that.
And Rebecca there are quaite many Gujarati language speaking SEO specialists whom i know and who might be taking the survey.. I think that language should be added too.
My comment even got sniped?? Moz = case of the Tuesdays!
That's ok - even the best has an off-day once in awhile. ;)
I will finish my Iphone application later!
Thank you...
I just deleted the dupe comment you left.
i'll take the survey after the blip in traff. if that's ok with you.
Nice survey - very impressed. So impressed that even after I got all the way through the first time and hit the submit button, it just hung up and then I spotted a "Done, but with errors on page" in bottom left of the IE browser window. So, I shut IE down (nothing makes me happier) and opened Firefox and blew threw the survey a second time with no trouble.
Nicely done!
Finally completed the survey. Thought it was just me, I got hung up on the server too. Any ways all this for the good of "SEO mankind".
Nice quick survey. I got hung up on the server once but when I came back it was smooth. Can't wait to see the results.
:)
The contact link in the note from Jeff doesn't work...needs a z at the end of seomoz :)
The survey, as written, is too broad. The results while sure to be interesting will be skewed by overlapping and competing truths.
I suggest that in future (1) you shrink the survey perspective to only inhouse, only contract, or only sole developers, etc. OR (2) institute a threaded model that can differentiate and correctly gather very different points of view.
That said I do wonder how all our little white lies will turn out in their aggregate. :)
I finished about 2/3 of it and it froze. I waited and waited...
Kudos for putting this together, there aren't many folks who could and even fewer that I'd feel comfortable giving honest answers to.
Unfortunately I'm also hung at about the 2/3 mark, hopefully that means there are hundreds of participants slamming your servers at this very moment. :) I'll give it another shot later.
man, that was long..!! but was not al that boring. I enjoyed it.. Cheeers !! :)
Excellent survey, I'm anxious to see its results.
One thing I would love to see in a blog post here is a full compilation of the options available to some of its questions which are related to the tools, blogs and options cited on it.
I know we can dig through SEOmoz to find those, but could you guys think about posting it? It would make me a hell of a service to give it to my team.
Thanks a lot!
No kidding, I fully expect an iPhone now. I'm demanding like that.
I guess I'm in the group that is having issues getting through this...I get about 3/4 done and it just spins. After 2 attempts, I'm going to come back to it after the traffic has lessened. It will be very interesting to see the results!
I hope the results won't be premium content guys...
Also, a suggestion may be to release the raw data to some of the members so you get an analysis from a wider panel of search marketers - then you can cobble it all together as you like and release the final version.
well done on the survey btw, for 51 questions it was very engaging and I didn't feel like bombing out at all like I would on other long surveys.
Lindop - nope. We're going to make all the data 100% free and accessible, both in raw format and in a full report with pretty charts and graphs. It's the least we can do given that 2100 people have already generously given their time to contribute.