When we asked respondents which is their ONE top priority, 35% said technical SEO fixes. This is followed by 25% who consider creating and deploying content to be the main priority. Tweet

Number One Roadblock: Technical SEO Fixes

When asked about the biggest SEO projects that are currently pending among SEOs, half (50%) said they are waiting for technical SEO fixes.

Given the majority (35%) of SEOs consider this to be the biggest priority out of all tasks, this is a worryingly high number.

SEO Priorities Take Weeks or More to Complete

We asked survey participants about how long they normally wait for these technical SEO fixes to be implemented, and the majority of respondents (37%) said it normally takes weeks, while: 

• 15% said months
• 1% said years

A lucky 16% of enterprise SEOs get technical SEO fixes resolved within hours with 30% reporting days.

Beyond that, SEOs reported the following standard SEO tasks take up a lot of their time: 

• Implementing structured data takes days (36%)
• Creating and deploying content takes weeks (37%)
• Internal linking implementation takes weeks (30%)

Lack of People Resources Is to Blame

When we asked about the challenges in implementing SEO projects, more than half (55%) said the biggest hurdle is the lack of SEO resources while 52.5% also mentioned a lack of dev or engineering resources.

Other challenges include: 

• Technology and CMS limitations (39%)
• Struggle to prove the business case and justify ROI (38%)
• Lack of time to implement projects (21%)
• Solutions deemed too risky by executives (11%)
  
  

SEOs Require Support to Perform Tasks

As our research showed, one of the biggest challenges facing SEOs is the inability to implement changes due to a lack of dev or engineering resources.

The key task SEOs struggle to implement without dev resources is adding or editing structured data, with an overwhelming 92% of SEOs saying they are unable to perform this task without dev or engineering resources.

Missed Opportunities for Revenue Growth

We asked the respondents how much they think organic revenue would grow if they were able to make all of the most important changes and tackle their top SEO priorities.

The vast majority (86%) estimated that the organic revenue would grow by between 50-100%. 

Companies Could Gain Millions Per Year By Implementing SEO Changes

To get a clearer idea of how much revenue is to be gained from SEO opportunities, we asked respondents about their company’s revenue. 

By combining the estimated company revenue with existing organic channels, we can determine SEOs believe: if all outstanding changes were implemented, revenues would expand by an average of $35.8 million per year.

Research Methodology

Our survey was conducted using the Zoho Survey platform and consisted of our email subscribers and clients. The survey was open between September 24 and September 29 2021, and received 1,195 responses. The average respondent estimated their company’s existing overall revenue to be approximately $132.1 million per year, and that organic revenues are $55.6 million of that total.

We didn’t ask our respondents to distinguish any personal features about themselves.

Where our questions were framed in a range, i.e. ‘50% - 60%’, we took the mid-point of the range and calculated figures based on a median.

Next Steps

Save time immediately and download the full PowerPoint deck so you can: 

• Leverage the survey results to get buy-in for more resources with your executive team
• Make a case for how to tap into missed revenue opportunities
• Be among the first to sign up to be the first to know about the launch of ClarityAutomation to scale SEO execution

Access more SEO research studies >

Lastly, we invite you to connect with Mitul Gandhi, Co-Founder and Chief Architect of seoClarity, on Twitter, and join the discussion about what can be gained when we remove barriers to SEO success.