2014 SEO Industry Survey

| Posted on | SEO News

Do you love search engine optimization? How about data? Maybe even surveys? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then you are in luck. This week, Moz has released the results of their 2014 SEO Industry Survey. The survey covers everything from search engine optimization and search engine marketing to social media and even average salaries. This year, it even has a special section that focuses on how people are dealing with the dreaded and much talked about keyword (not provided).

The data was compiled by Dr. Pete Meyers, who has put together several of these surveys in the past as well, back when Moz was known as SEO Moz. You can read the whole survey here, but we wanted to break down a couple interesting sections below as well.


Here you can see the top 5 activities that SEOs and digital marketers spent their time on in 2013:

Top 5 Activties

This list is pretty straightforward, with one major point of interest to me: keyword research. Of course, keyword research is vital to SEO, but it seems surprising to me that it rated so highly, above brand strategy and social media marketing. It makes sense that analytics is number one and content marketing number two (though I would switch them on my list) but I would have keyword research at number five, because if you’re researching effectively, you shouldn’t be spending that much of your day to day on it.


Here you can see the top 5 metrics that SEOs and digital marketers concentrated on in 2013:


This list is a little more to my liking. Conversions is number one. You can make a case for revenue over conversions, but I think conversions is the better goal. Of course, revenue is more important, but I think by focusing on conversions, you’ll drive more revenue in an effective way. It’s sort of like how Sabermetrics is used in baseball. Of course you want to win games, but you don’t buy wins, you buy runs, and the rest falls into place.

Again, click here to read the rest of the study, and let me know what you think.