70% of UK Small Businesses in SEO #fail

I can't believe what I'm looking at by Ed Yourdon

Really? Still? A study commissioned by ThomsonLocal.com found that 70% of companies with less than 50 employees were doing little or no search engine optimisation.

Considering the importance of search marketing, particularly for SMEs and the basic optimisation included in practically all ecommerce and content management tools, the results are rather startling: 

  • 47% of all business websites have none or very basic levels of SEO
  • Over 70% of companies with less than 50 employees have none or very basic levels of SEO
  • 74% have no basic website analytics software for tracking site visits
  • 12% of all business websites are not indexed in any search engine
  • 0.6% of business websites are under construction
  • Only 3% of all business websites could be considered to have advanced levels of SEO
  • 82% have no HTML sitemap
  • 75% have no XML sitemap
  • 69% have no Robots.txt file configured
  • 35% do not have unique Page Titles
  • 56% do not have unique Page Descriptions

At the least, this should provide encouraging news for the new business folks at search agencies.

The full survey is available for free from the Analytics SEO, who produced it.

Photo (cc) Ed Yourdon.

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