Google Tools at Center of SEO Industry Activity

August 21, 2012

This article is included in these additional categories:

Analytics, Automated & MarTech | Data-driven | Digital | Paid Search | Personalization | Search Engine Optimization | Social Media

seomoz-seo-use-google-tools-august2012.pngGoogle tools are front and center in the SEO world, a fairly unsurprising discovery, though the extent to which the industry leans on them is quite significant, per results of an SEOmoz survey of almost 6,500 of its readers from around the world. 93% of respondents use Google Analytics, the top analytics tool by far, with WordPress Stats (16%) a distant second. Rounding out the top 5 analytics tools are Omniture (13%), CrazyEgg (9%) and Compete (7%).

Econsultancy and Lynchpin found a similar dependance on Google Analytics in a July 2012 study. 87% of the companies surveyed use Google Analytics for web analytics, either exclusively (47%) or not (40%). Google Analytics are used most often for traffic and conversion KPIs (84%) and campaign tracking (71%).

Google Tops for Keyword Research, Conversion Optimization, Too

Google leads the list of the top 5 keyword research tools as well, with Google AdWords being used by 88.3% of respondents to the SEOmoz survey. Second place belongs to Google Insights (58.6%), followed by SEMRush (20.2%), Wordtracker (16.7%), and Raven (13.9%).

Google is also head of the class in conversion-rate optimization and usability tools, with 73% of respondents using Google Website Optimizer. CrazyEgg (18%), Pingdom (16%), ClickTale (11%) and KISSmetrics (8%) all trail.

Google Products Used for Content Marketing, Video Hosting

Google tools also appear twice on the top 5 list of content marketing and outreach tools. Twitter takes the lead in the category, used by 74% of respondents, followed by LinkedIn (53%). Google’s Insights for Search is the third most-commonly used content marketing and outreach tool (45%), followed by StumbleUpon (31%) and Google Reader (also 31%).

In terms of the top video hosting solutions, Google-owned YouTube leads with 75% adoption, followed by Vimeo (30%), Facebook (23%), Google+ (15%), and self-hosting (11%).

1 in 4 Don’t Use Paid Tools for SEO

Close to one-quarter of the respondents said they do not use paid tools for SEO. The top free tools used in the previous year by respondents include: Google Webmaster Tools (83%); SEOmoz and Open Site Explorer (47%); Bing Webmaster Tools (42%); Firebug (41%); and Majestic SEO (31%).

The top paid tools used include: SEOmoz and Open Site Explorer (55%); Majestic SEO (17%); Raven (17%); SEMRush (13%); and Screaming Frog (10%). The researchers caution that because the survey was conducted among the SEOmoz reader base, it favors SEOmoz tools.

Other Findings:

  • 92% of respondents offer SEO services. 71% believe SEO is growing as a service area, slightly behind the 72% who believe social media and/or community management to be on the increase.
  • SEO is the top priority that both individuals and teams are spending their time on.
  • 57% of respondents reported using conversion tracking to improve ROI.
  • 41% employed A/B or multivariate testing.
  • 24% implemented multi-channel attribution.

About The Data: Data was gathered from an online survey, and from the SEOmoz readership (who, the researchers warn, are naturally biased toward SEOmoz analytics tools). 47.3% of respondents were US-based.

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