We all know that Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a crucial element of web success. In 2011 alone, more than 300 million people used search engines every day, while globally search engine usage remained on a 10 per cent growth curve throughout the year – indomitable figures indeed. But how important is SEO to businesses in the Middle East? To gauge the affects of SEO on regional businesses, we decided to conduct a study of our own.
The study was based on analysis of client feedback from more than twenty companies that use our SEO Dubai solutions. The survey covered clients from a variety of industries including real estate, insurance, banking, and government organizations, and was exclusively designed to identify the relevance of SEO to businesses operating in the region.
Around 62 percent of the companies surveyed reported that SEO improved their website’s ROI by a margin of 30 per cent. Of these companies, 33 per cent confirmed that SEO improved their site’s lead generation by 51.1 per cent, while 47 per cent of the surveyed companies reported an increase in lead generation by 35 per cent. Although results vary between B2B and B2C markets, almost 80 per cent of our clients reported that SEO improved their site’s traffic by a whopping 79.8 per cent within the designated campaign period.
“Our findings show that local companies have realized the marketing potential of Search Engine Optimization,” says Johnny Huntington, Managing Director Traffic. “Our results are in line with recent studies conducted in Europe, which suggest that search engine optimization remains the most valuable tool for increasing company brand visibility, and increasing a site’s traffic, leads and conversions.”
Moreover the study proved that SEO is an extremely cost-effective means of marketing. The date revealed that in terms of dollar value our clients regarded SEO as a more efficient tool than Social Media Marketing (SMM) and Pay-Per-Click (PPC) ads. On average our clients allocated no more than 13.3 per cent of their annual marketing budget to SEO, and were extremely pleased with the “apparent” ROI.
Algorithms aren’t going away anytime soon, and given the widening accessibility, affordability and understanding of SEO in the Middle East, the competition for SERPs will definitely become tougher in the future. This is precisely why 95 per cent of the companies we surveyed plan to keep SEO as part of their 2012 marketing budget. In fact, 52 per cent of the surveyed companies plan to “increase” their SEO budget in the coming year.
To find out how SEO can help you generate leads, sales and conversions, and how it can help your site grow and prosper in the ultra-competitive environment of the Middle East, contact Traffic today.
