SearchEngineLand.com reported the survey, today, December 8, 2011.

The exact question asked of the respondents was “If you had to put all your marketing time and budget into only one channel, what would it be?”

The graphic below shows that SEO was by far the most common response to the question.

From an SEO practitioner’s point of view, this fortifies my faith in the rationality of small business owners (tongue in cheek). Now I’m a bit biased, but in all seriousness folks, SEO has all the benefits of the other marketing channels mentioned and fewer of their down falls.

With tools like Google Analytics, we can measure the return on investment to a high degree, unlike traditional media and social media. While paid search or (pay-per-click/ppc) is just as measurable as SEO, that traffic is turned off as soon as the campaign is stopped. SEO results tend to have considerable staying power, allowing new markets to be tapped as previous campaigns continue to pay dividends.

Also, SEO campaigns allow for incredible focus and efficiency compared to the other marketing channels mentioned. You can place your message/offer/web presence directly in front of a prospect searching for a solution.

As much as I am an advocate of SEO it is clear that the rise of social media in the next five years and beyond may change the dominance of SEO.

Matt McGee reported on a new survey of online marketers. The 2011 State of Digital Marketing Report from Webmarketing123 shows that SEO (Search Engine Optimization, or Organic Search Engine Traffic) is the best source of leads for both Business-to-consumer and Business-to-business marketers.

In August and September of 2011, the survey asked 500 online marketers for their best source of leads between SEO, PPC (Pay-per click), and Social Media Marketing.

As you can see from the graphic below, SEO accounted for 57.4% of the lead generating for Business-to-business marketers and 41% for Business-to-consumer marketers.

They also asked the respondents where do they spend the majority of their budgets. While about a third of B2B marketers say SEO is the majority of their budget, B2C marketers say PPC accounts for the majority of their budget.

I think the B2C results are especially interesting, and obvious to anyone doing B2C marketing. You can not ignore PPC traffic, because even though many times it is not as profitable as SEO or organic traffic, it is still profitable and there is so much available. It also reminds us to take the PPC winners and heavily invest in SEO in these markets.

The survey also revealed that the biggest budget increases where planed for social media marketing. About 60% of the respondents say they will increase spending for social media marketing, while only 53% plan for increases in SEO and only 40% in PPC.

I’m not sure if this is the result of testing waters, so to speak, in social media or if they see actual potential for social media leads. It will be interesting how the top graphic will change in the coming years. My prediction is that while social media may increase its share, especially in B2C, SEO will remain King for years.

However, I found this great video from SearchEngineLand that does an excellent job of describing SEO in plain English. If you’ve been curious, but still aren’t satisfied, I hope you enjoy…

Here’s the breakdown:

• Position one get a click-through rate (CTR) of 36.4%.
• Position 2 gets a CTR of 12.5%.
• The CTR’s for position 3-10 are 9.5%, 7.9%, 6.1%, 4.1%, 3.8%, 3.0%, 2.2%.

Here’s the take away: The top results get as many clicks as results 2-5 combined – it pays to be number one.

Read the executive summary and download the report at, http://www.optify.net/guides/organic-click-through-rate-curve.

Completeness and Consistency – Google makes this pretty simple. They will tell you how complete your listing is. Like Geoff points out Google wants to offer its users the best possible experience. Therefore its important to add pictures, videos, and all the details.  Consistency is a huge one. You want to make sure your citation (a citation is like your Google Places fingerprint, its your Company Name, Address, and Phone Number) is consistent every place it occurs on the internet. He also provides a great link to the top places to get citations.

Keywords – With Google Places its definitely the case of less is more. Google is pretty sharp when it comes to any kind of keyword stuffing. Considering how important your Google Places listing is these days it’s just not worth it. Geoff offers you may want to try to work in a few major keywords naturally into your description.

Service Area – Just like with keywords its best just to be honest here. If you have a service area put it in, if not and all the customers visit your site, then just leave this alone.

Encouraging Reviews – We know getting more reviews must help in the rankings. When you look at a competitive market most of the top ranking will have lots of reviews. At the same time in most of these seemingly competitive markets you will see a company or two with one or only a few reviews. I don’t think anyone has completely figured out the Places algorithm. Geoff gives some great ideas for companies to encourage reviews.

Geoff also goes over how to optimize a bulk upload which is important to companies with more than 10 locations.

I highly recommend reading the complete article: Optimizing Your Google Places Page | SEOmoz.

The response from a Google spokesperson was,

The layout for local search results will vary depending on how confident our algorithm is in determining if you’re looking for local information. So in some instances you might see a full Place Search page, and in others, you’ll see a more condensed view. Of course, you can always click on the “Places” icon on the left to get the full Place Search view.

I guess we just have to get used to some variety in the results we get back from Google Places. The whole story and pictures of the screen shots can be found at: Google Places Isn’t Testing New Layouts … Get Used to Variety

Here are some of the interesting results:

• 84.1 percent of the U.S. Internet audience viewed online video.
• The top video ad networks in terms of their potential reach of the total U.S. population were: ScanScout at 44.3 percent, Break Media at 42.0 percent and BrightRoll Video Network at 41.9 percent.
• The duration of the average online content video was 5.0 minutes, while the average online video ad was 0.4 minutes.
• Video ads accounted for 12.8 percent of all videos viewed and 1.2 percent of all minutes spent viewing video online.

Google sites are serving the most videos and Hulu is serving the most ads.

The whole press release is available below:
comScore Releases October 2010 U.S. Online Video Rankings

I think that any small business that sells products should take advantage of this immediately. You don’t even have to pay until someone makes a purchase.

You’re probably going to want to watch this video as well:

Now, given this fact, it goes to with out saying that traditional local sources like newspapers and yellow pages are on the verge of extinction. This is when Local Search shines – to bring accurate and local search results to internet users in just a few clicks. In a nutshell, local search is basically the internet’s version of the phone book. The difference being that this “phone book” is faster and far more responsive.

Try to picture this, you are in Torrance and you are looking for a place to dine and unwind, you enter the search term “Restaurants in Torrance”. Results will give you Claim Jumper Restaurant, Elephant Bar restaurant etc. along with its maps, driving directions, the option to email the location to a friend and more.

Indeed, local search boasts many benefits over the traditional print directories and the listings are highly interactive.

So, What Can Local Search Do For Your Small Business?

In today’s era of Internet-based technologies and rampant networking, no business is going to reach its highest potential without the help of online marketing and advertising. Online marketing allows any type of business whether small or big to acquire global and local exposure. With this incredible exposure, these businesses get more sales and networking opportunities – essential for their success.

There are various ways of marketing online, but the hottest online marketing trend today is local search. It is the most important way to generate search engine exposure for local small businesses. Local search is primarily beneficial for businesses that want to drive potential customers to their physical stores.

Normally, buyers want online information about where to buy locally. Most small businesses are local in nature, catering consumer’s needs that live nearby. Historically, their customers found them through traditional directories like the Yellow Pages or newspaper ads, however, today, that method has been revolutionized by local search.

As mentioned above, more and more individuals rely on search engines to find places to shop in the fastest and easiest way. What Local Search does is to combine the search query words or phrase with specific geographic terms, like city or zip code to get results of specific businesses located in the given local area. So, if you optimize your small business for local search, you are getting additional opportunities to convert online visitors to potential customers.

Indeed, Local search advertising is expanding its horizon. In the U.S. alone, it is predicted to grow more than 80% year over year between 2005 and 2009.

How are you going to Optimize Your Small Business Website for Local Search?

With the changing habits of customers, local businesses need to be flexible to keep up with the competition. If you want your company’s information such as brand name, address, phone number, website address, business description and business hours to appear on local search engines, then you have several options. You can do so by including your business in Internet Yellow Pages (IYP), or have it in direct contact with the local search engines (such as through Google, Yahoo or Bing), or utilize search engine optimization services. This will put your business on the radar screen.