Internet Marketers Top SEO, Keyword and Social Media Tools

Don’t know about you, but when an SEO industry survey is conducted by a trusted authority in the subject matter, I am all ears to find out the results of such an endeavor. The reason for this is that, among other things, the results reveal some interesting information about how internet marketers conduct their SEO and inbound marketing techniques online.

Recently, SEOMoz released its 2012 SEO industry survey and there are indeed some interesting results that I would like to share with you, due to its importance, for those who are looking to understand a bit more about the Inbound marketing tactics, SEO tools, Keyword tools, etc., that internet marketing professionals and like minded people employ. While the online survey is not a representative of the industry as a whole, there were nearly 6,500 people and/or organizations (from several countries) who participated in it. That’s quite a good number, if you ask me.

Anyway, following below are some of the most interesting information that I believe is worth mentioning.

What types of inbound marketing content do you or your team produce?

The overwhelming majority of respondents use blog post and social media, as their favored content strategy. I’m guessing that blog posts includes, those that are published directly on the owners website and that of guest blogging too. Notice that video marketing, for some reason, is only the 7th choice of respondents.

Inbound Marketing Content

Top 5 analytics tools as % of respondents

Hands down, Google and its set of free SEO tools, crushes all of its competitors. Google keeps making their analytics tool better and better. Take the in-page analytics tool, which is just absolutely great to understand how your visitors behave when they are on your site (your own sites “heat map”).

Surprising is WordPress stats coming in at a distant second.

  1. 93% – Google Analytics
  2. 16% – WordPress Stats
  3. 13% – Omniture
  4. 9% – CrazyEgg
  5. 7% – Compete

Top 5 keyword research tools

Again, Google’s keyword and marketing tools, overtakes everything else. SEMRush comes in at second place. Keyword tools are very important when optimizing either your blog post or your website. After all, when users look for something on search engines, the terms they type in is nothing else but a bunch of words, or better know as keywords or key phrases. When doing a keyword research, make use of Google’s tool and don’t forget to also use of their “contextual tool”, which is great if your are running Google’s AdSense program.

  1. 88.3% – Google AdWords
  2. 58.6% – Google Insights
  3. 20.2% – SEMRush (aff)
  4. 16.7% – Wordtracker
  5. 13.9% – Raven

Top 5 content marketing and outreach tools

  1. 74% – Twitter
  2. 53% – LinkedIn
  3. 45% – Google’s Insights for Search
  4. 31% – StumbleUpon
  5. 31% – Google Reader

Top 5 Conversion Rate Optimization and usability tools

Google’s website optimizer is again one of the top choices for running experiments on your site. Google Website Optimizer is however no longer available, and you can use Google Analytics Content Experiments to conduct a/b testing on your website, among other things.

  1. 73% – Google Website Optimizer
  2. 18% – CrazyEgg
  3. 16% – Pingdom
  4. 11% – ClickTale
  5. 8% – KISSmetrics

Top 5 video hosting solutions

Skipping YouTube, which is as you know a web property of Google, I found it very interesting that many internet marketers are using “self-hosted” solutions for hosting their videos.

  1. 75% – YouTube
  2. 30% – Vimeo
  3. 23% – Facebook
  4. 15% – Google+
  5. 11% – Self-hosted

Ad Spend – Paid Advertising

Ad spend is diversifying in 2012, with “retargeting” making its way through. While this is so, PPC and display advertising still leads the way.piad advertising

That’s it! Here, you can see the full 2012 SEO Survey, where you can see the complete set of questions that respondents answered to and also download the complete “raw data” in excel, if you wish to do some calculations of your own.

So, did any of these results surprise you? Which ones? Why?

DiTesco

DiTesco is a Business and Inbound Marketing Consultant, and founder of iBlogzone.com. iBlogzone's main objective is to help startups and small business owners achieve success in their online ventures. | More About Me and my Digital Marketing Services in SP Brazil.

18 thoughts on “Internet Marketers Top SEO, Keyword and Social Media Tools

  • Hey DiTesco,

    i have become a regular here on your blog and I must say it has been a HUGE help to me and my quest to run a great blog. This post got my creative juices flowing and is food for thought.

    Thanks!

  • Very detailed comparison here about some parts & tools of SEO.
    I also use Google Analytic for for analysis of website traffic. Google has very services for SEO tools and services..

  • This SEO Theory studies the behaviors of systems of Web pages and search engine systems, as well as their interactions is very intersting know how a Web page “behaves” through its content how a search engine “behaves” through its algorithms. The dynamics of interaction between Web pages and search engines draw upon the forces of marketing, information management, and user management.

  • This is a great survey with some quite predictable results.

    Google’s tools are simply unbeatable for keyword research and Analytics. As I never ceased to be amazed by how powerful Analytics is in particular. Great for tracking where your referral traffic is from. Helps me refine my social media strategy no end!

    Great post!

  • Hi DiTesco,
    thanks for this article. I’m only surprised with high place(s) of LinkedIn – it only shows that this network is underestimated and it’s worth more, than some people think…
    Chris

  • Great post ! very informative tools , i really needed more than one keyword tool as i was replying only on google keyword tool , i heard there are good plugins to find keywords do you suggest something to put my money in ?

  • this post is very informative, and for sure google and PPC is leading in internet network

  • Google Analytics is way out in front in the Analytics group, I don’t think that’s gonna change anytime soon. They control the search engines which makes sense on how their analytics algorithms are way better.

  • Very helpful post for bloggers and webmasters. It clearly shows how search industry is still dominated by Google.

    Google tools are simply awesome as they are free and learning curve is not too long.

  • Not much of surprise that in any of these top tools, Google service or website appear. Definitely those tools need to be used and become number one priority for every webmaster and blogger. I would also add Google central blog as probably the best resource of information for webmasters.

  • Hi DiTesco,
    You have put all the information about the SEO in just one Post,appreciated.
    There are a lot of deep research results in here to know more about what actually a blogger do.

    I also prefer Blog commenting When it comes to bringing good amount of traffic.Its the best method to work upon.Your infographics has provided a great view of how the ongoing SEO’s is getting help from and where to focus more while building backlinks.

  • Much of the information here isn’t all that surprising. Google Analytics dominates because it’s so feature-rich and reliable. Adwords is huge because of trusted results. The only thing here that surprises me is that Linkedin is #2 in online marketing – it’s definitely something to take advantage of in promoting blogs and websites!

  • Lately I’ve been finding that the best numbers come from using tools in combination.

    I’ve been enjoying using crazy egg in combination with google analytics.

  • “Top 5 content marketing and outreach tools”

    Strange that Facebook is not in that list. Facebook has quite strong power when doing SEO.

  • That’s great source Francisco !
    That’s true surprise about WordPress in #2 analytics tools (Despite a considerable gap)

    Deny!

  • I have become a regular here on your blog and I must say it has been a huge help to me to run a great blog.This post is very informative.

  • Some great info here I have only just started with which was googles website optimiser only stumbled across it reading on your site. So for some more great information on which way to turn

    Thanks lee

  • Great post! If it’s ok, I’d like to mention one more interesting tool which is strongly connected with the topic 😉 – Colibritool. They provide lots of statistics about your website – keyword analysis tool (suggestions and rich statistics) but not only. It has backlink checker, traffic statistics, goals, conversion measurement and competition monitoring. Feel free to test 🙂

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