How many small businesses use SEO?

[jsteimle]

I'm looking for data (not opinions) on how many small businesses use SEO, that is, either do it in-house, hire a firm, or hire a freelancer. I've poked around on SEMPO and eConsultancy but can't find what I'm looking for.

[EGOL]

I have an answer.

Less than ten in any industry niche.

Why that number? That is how man fit on the first page of Google and everyone else - even if they do SEO - is not getting much out of it.

[RobertFisher]

Another good question. Probably hiring someone outside to optimize their site would certainly point to their knowledge of the need of SEO. I would say that you would have to preface with, "Other than when you built your website, have you ever..."

Experience would agree with Phil in that the number would be small. Most businesses we speak with believed they just needed a website and the world would flock to their door. I think that is good news for those who are all in for the SEO business

[AU-SEO]

I guess a Phone survey might work. Whatever the number I am sure it is likely to be small. Maybe a good question to ask is how often do Small Businesses Regularly update their website's content.

I think we are still in the days of trying just to get many small business online. In our world we would expect everyone to be online, but you would be surprised at how few actually even have a website. Even fewer regularly update them and even less have attempted to optimize them.

I would look into internet statistics related to how many small businesses use the internet to conduct or acquire business and make some conservative assumptions from there.

The Google Small Business Network is still fairly young and is a good high level indicator of where we think we are vs where we actually are. http://www.google.com/smallbusinessnetwork/

Who knows maybe they will post something on Google Internet Stats: http://www.google.co.uk/intl/en/landing/internetstats/

-Phil

[MarieHaynes]

Good points!  What about asking each business have they ever hired someone (outside of their company) to optimize their website?

[RobertFisher]

Even with a phone survey you would likely need to improve your question. We talk with companies every day who are quick to point out that they already do SEO. Typically, what they point out is that the person or company who built their site did SEO. Originally, we never intended to build websites are were careful to stick to SEO and SEM.

Unfortunately, whenever we were dealing with a client who had someone hosting or who they called when they needed something done to the site, we were always dealing with a person who "knew" SEO. So, the client was using SEO. But, the site would be an SEO disaster, there would be no local presence, and they did not know how to login to Google Analytics.

So, who uses it is not really a question that can be answered to provide any actionable data. I would think you would need to ask specific questions around basic SEO, after developing a framework as to what would or would not constitute knowledge of SEO that would equate to use of SEO. (And then probably a final question of given what you know of SEO, are you currently utilizing that in your business today?)

Good question

[MarieHaynes]

I'll be surprised if anyone could give you hard data on this type of thing.  There would be so many variables such as what niche the business is in, what location they are in and more.

I suppose if you needed hard data you could do a phone survey of local businesses in your area.