MarketingSherpa has released their 2nd Annual Search Marketing Benchmark report. 3,271 search marketers provided real-life results data for the survey.

The new report includes new statistics on clicks, costs and conversions as well as information on SEM test effectiveness. There’s some pretty compelling data regarding outsourcing site optimization to a search engine optimization agency as well.

For SEO performance, overall site traffic lift six months after optimization was:

Agency optimized 110% increase
In-house optimized 38% increase

From my experience, most in-house SEO staff are also tasked with many other responsibilites and the distractions of corporate politics, where agency SEO staff are dedicated to search engine optimization.

While marketers using SEM were much more pleased about their PPC campaigns this year over last, 8-12% were planning on cutting SEM budgets.

The report several hundred charts of useful data so you can compare your campaigns to the “norm” using:

• Cost per click
• Average click rate
• Conversion rates
• How much marketers really budget for search
• Optimization vs PPC results

More info on the report is on the MarketingSherpa’s Benchmark Guide site.

http://www.toprankresults.com