Saurabh Kumar — April 5, 2017 Envigo recently concluded a survey on SEO trends in 2017. The survey got 100+ responses from digital marketers from brand and agency backgrounds. Their responses give good insight into their expectations from SEO and Google natural search and how it is expected to evolve over the next 12 months.
The research was designed as a questionnaire with 11 multiple choice questions. The responses have been summarized and their highlights are being shown below.
Key findings of the SEO survey
- 54% believe that Voice Search trend will impact Google search results
- 53% stated that Content is a major constituent of an SEO project
- 83% are of the view that the main objective of an SEO project is to increase organic visits
- 51% agreed that submissions into local and industry directories is the most common tactic being used to generate inbound links
- 62% stated that they used an active strategy for relevant sources of free traffic, apart from search engines
- 52% respondents admitted to using an in-house team for SEO
Change in Importance of SEO Factors
There are well over 100+ factors that influence Google, and this was before rank brain. We asked the respondents about 12 such factors.
SEO factors expected to increase in importance:
- Mobile friendliness
- Usability
- Site speed
- Structured data
SEO factors expected to remain unchanged in importance:
- Number of external links
- Inbound anchor text
- Inbound domain authority
SEO factors expected to decrease in importance:
- Onpage keyword density
Important takeways
Some of the key takeaways are below:
Barriers to SEO Growth: Creativity
40% of participants find creativity to be the main barrier to SEO growth.
Most important new tactic
High quality content is the area indicated by 53% of the respondents as the most important SEO tactic in use today.
Broadbase link generation techniques
85% respondents were using more than 1 kind of link generation technique, while 65% were using 4 or more types.
Agency versus In-house for SEO skills
50% respondents recommended a mix of agency and in-house skills.
The original infographic is published here.
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