SEO, SMEs and a lack of understanding

A recent survey commissioned by Thompson Local shows as many as 70% of businesses employing less than 50 people have no or very basic levels of SEO.

The survey showed that most sites were not performing against even the basis SEO criteria. A quick list includes: 

• 82% have no HTML sitemap
• 75% have no XML sitemap
• 69% have no Robots.txt file configured
• 71% have no Custom 404 page configured
• 35% do not have unique Page Titles
• 56% do not have unique Page Descriptions

The reason why is that these sites are built by "a cottage industry of one-man-bands and small firms; ... [or] a neighbour, friend, relative or potentially worse may have bought one of the poorly optimised website design templates available online". (Hmmm .. I've lost a few pitches to that lot!)

And the reason why this cottage industry is in demand is, as another survey by Naked SEO reveals, ithat SMEs go for the cheap option as they don't understand the benefits an effectively optimised site can bring. 

The results of this second survey reveal a lack of knowledge about SEO lead to an unwillingness to make the appropriate investment.

• 22% did not know what SEO was, and therefore didn't invest
• 20% were aware SEO yet chose not to allocate any budget for it
• 18% chose to spend their money on paid search instead
• Only 15% invested in search and considered it either an important or crucial part of their marketing strategy

So it seems that agencies like BarnesGraham who service the SME market need to think about client education as a route to sales, if they are going to win SME clients against poorer but cheaper alternative.

I'll give that some thought, in the meantime if you'd like a more informal view on the value of SEO you know where to find me!

Published by: Mr Tom Barnes

Published 13th August, 2010

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