On February 2005 Zdnet (Cnet) France and Imitiki organized a search engine marketing survey. This survey was targeted to Zdnet France, Abondance, Web Rank Info and Agent Web Ranking readers (mainly people that play any role in promoting their websites in search engines).

540 people have completed this brief survey.

Zdnet and ImiTiki have just posted the results of this survey. As this survey is in French I have decided to translate it in English

SEO results:

1) Is Search engine optimization important for you?

• Yes: 94.7%
• No: 5.3%

2) Is your site optimized for search engines?

• Yes: 77.3%
• No but I plan to do it: 16%
• No because it is useless: 6.7%

3) When do you plan to optimize it?

• Within the next 3 months: 72.6%
• Within the next 6 months: 11.3%
• Before the end of the year: 10.5%
• Next year: 5.6%

4) Are you satisfied by your search engine ranking

• Very satisfied: 12%
• Satisfied: 33.5%
• Moderately satified: 40.2%
• Unsatisfied: 11.8%
• Very unsatisfied: 2.6%

5) SEO is made internally or externally?

• Internally: 81.3%
• Externally: 18.7%

6) How much time do you spend on SEO?

• 1 day per month: 49.1 %
• 2 days or more per month: 42.1 %
• 1 people full time per month: 7.2 %
• 2 people or more full time per month: 1.6 %

7) What is your annual budget for SEO:

• Time: 63.2%
• Less than 500 euros:10.2 %
• 500 to 1 000 euros: 9.0 %
• 1 000 to 2 000 euros: 5.9 %
• 2 000 to 5 000 euros: 4.1 %
• 5 000 to 10 000 euros: 1.8 %
• 10 000 to 20 000 euros: 2.8 %
• 20 000 to 30 000 euros: 2.3 %
• More than 30 000 euros: 0.8 %

8) How to you control your SEO effectiveness?

• Control your SEO ranking on search engines: 54%
• Analyze your search engines referers: 35%
• Analyze business generated by search engines (ROI): 11.1%

9) Do you control your search engine rankings?

• Yes with a software: 20.5%
• Yes with an online tool: 25.3%
• No but my SEO expert produces ranking reports: 15.3%
• No: 38.9%

10) Do you use a tool to control your website traffic?

• Yes: 72.6%
• No: 27.4%

Sponsored links results:

11: Do you use sponsored link for your search?

• Yes, in priority: 2.5%
• Yes sometimes: 26,2%
• Rarely: 41,9%
• Never: 29,4%

12: Do you think the difference between search engine results and sponsored links is enough explicit?

• Yes: 37,2%
• No: 18%
• It depends on the search engine: 44.9%

13. What do you think about sponsored links results relevance?

• Very Good: 3%
• Good: 42.1%
• Moderately satified: 42.1%
• Not good: 12.7%

14. Do you plan to buy sponsored links?

• Yes: 23.7%
• Not now but I plan to do it: 23.7%
• No because I do not need it: 52.6%

15. Why do you use sponsored links?

• To get more visitors to your site: 60.5%
• It is one way to reach your goals (sales, traffic, contact): 55.8%
• It is your main way to reach your goals (sales, traffic, contact): 13.2%
• It is an alternative to other ads: 49.5%
• Other: 3.7%

16. What PPC do you mainly use:

• Google: 82.6%
• Overture: 11.2%
• Espotting: 4.9%
• Mirago: 4.5%
• Other:18.8%

17. What is your yearly PPC budget?

• 0 euro: 28.4 %
• Less than 500 euros: 25.3 %
• 500 to 1 000 euros: 14.7 %
• 1 000 to 2 000 euros: 8.9 %
• 2 000 to 5 000 euros: 15,8 %
• 5 000 to 10 000 euros: 6.8 %
• 10 000 to 20 000 euros: 3.2 %
• 20 000 to 30 000 euros: 2.6 %
• More than 30 000 euros: 4.2 %

Even if 94.7% of French companies (small, medium and large) understand the importance of Search engine marketing, the amount they invest on SEO and Sponsored links are very low!

If you know similar surveys in the US, Europe or anywhere in the world do not hesitate to post it, it will be interesting to compare it.

Comments about this survey:

• Emmanuel Parody (Director of Content and Production CNET Networks France) on his blog
• Olivier Andrieu from abondance.com

About Imitiki: Imitiki is owned by Olivier Andrieu from Abondance and Agent Web Ranking. Imitiki organizes SEO seminars and events in France.