Fortune 500 Businesses Below the Curve on SEO
Recently, Conductor put out a report highlighting the search strategies of the infamous Fortune 500 from Q4 2009. These Goliath-sized companies are well known for their ability to crowd out the competition. The Internet has become the great equalizer. It is to say, if you can obtain an enviable position in the search engines, you can effectively crowd out those huge retailers in a way that a brick and mortar store could never accomplish; David can beat Goliath, no matter how intimidating Goliath might be.
The report’s results are shocking:
- The Fortune 500 as a group spent approximately $3.4 million per day on 97,559 keywords – yet only 25% of these keywords rank in the top 50 natural search results.
- Only 2% of the domains (not companies) surveyed showed a significant number of their terms in the top results. All of these positive domain scores were offset by other owned domains with significant visibility issues.
- 15% of Fortune 500 companies studied showed mid to strong presence for their most advertised keywords.
- 32% of Fortune 500 companies have low to mid presence.
- 53% of Fortune 500 companies have no natural search visibility for their most advertised keywords.
- Fortune 500 natural search visibility decreased with longer search queries.
If these numbers are accurate (which I assume they are), they indicate that the state of SEO in these Fortune 500s is less than ideal. Perhaps Fortune 500’s view SEO as a non-viable marketing tactic; maybe they think their IT teams can just “figure it out”; it could be that the executives within these companies just flat out don’t understand the concept.
Having worked extensively with Fortune 500 companies, I wouldn’t be surprised if most of these giant brands are relying on branded organic search to drive traffic. While effective insofar as their brands are probably getting searched an awful lot, this strategy is greatly limiting. In the end, these brands miss out on huge (incredibly inexpensive) opportunities that natural, organic search presents when done correctly. In my own experience, these lumbering, giant corporations are mired by their processes. Any Fortune 500 SEO engagement I’ve been involved with goes a bit like…
1. Marketing team has to approve
2. Legal counsel has to approve
3. Marketing team has to approve again after legal
4. Sends back to agency for approval
5. Agency does work again
6. Marketing sends to IT
7. IT implements
8. Wash, Rinse and Repeat
Whatever the case, the inability of large companies to execute efficiently in the arena of natural search presents huge opportunities for the courageous, savvy online entrepreneur. Like David, these young companies are slimmer than most large conglomerates. They are able to make quick decisions and implement them with incredible agility. They are not mired by fears of litigious competition, approvals come more quickly, and they are implemented instantly. Such qualities are incredibly important in the ever-changing world of search.
Of all the statistics in the report, the one that stands out most to me is the $3.4 million that Fortune 500 companies spend each and every day on PPC. This is huge!
What should they do? They ought to allocate a portion of the their daily budget to SEO. Ranking naturally for key terms that convert and reeling back spending on high cost keywords is an effective and inexpensive way to reduce spending hugely. This is beneficial for multiple reasons, one being, It not only saves money, but at the same time shifts PPC spend for testing new keywords that may increase additional sales. Spend can resume later to also “crowd out the competition” but at a lower position. It is to say that there are multiple avenues Fortune 500’s could take.
In the end, this report is GREAT news for all the David’s of this world. It appears that Goliath is ill prepared to capitalize on search. What that means is that the door is wide open for competition, big or small. Going after both the short tail and long tail terms that these high-grossing businesses are ignoring will certainly allow you to pick up a percentage of their missed opportunities.
If you could spend $500k a day on your marketing, how would you spend it?
