Anyone wondering whether to polish up their search engine optimisation skills should be swayed by the latest figures, which show the UK market has grown by nearly 20% over the past year – and is now worth £514m.
The discipline, often shrouded in mystery, has grown from £436m at the end of 2010, according to Econsultancy’s new SEO Agencies Buyer’s Guide.
The valuation includes payments to agencies as well as investment in client-side staff to manage SEO and implement changes. It also takes into account the specialist services surrounding natural search, such as SEO PR and social media optimisation for search.
Organic search continues to see strong growth despite economic uncertainty, a trend which is reflected across many digital marketing sectors.
Econsultancy senior research analyst Jake Hird said: “It’s great to see that natural search has developed into a half-billion pound industry in the UK. Marketers are increasingly placing an emphasis on a longer-term online strategy, with SEO seen as a highly effective method of delivering return on investment by successfully driving traffic and increasing sales.”
He added: “This also demonstrates the shifting landscape of the SEO marketplace. Now, search practitioners have to deal with elements such as social, mobile and local search, as well as continuing to optimise for other types of content such as video and images. It’s a complex landscape, but one that marketers are clearly engaging with.”
One of the trends highlighted in the report is that the boundaries of SEO are blurring as a digital discipline. SEO is leaving its technical silo, and is permeating areas such as content marketing, PR, and in the context of social media, even customer service. This blurring of the discipline with other areas is being driven by business priorities rather than technical divisions.
