Study: Etailers, Anti-Virus struggling with SEO

When it comes to search engine optimization, it seems that nearly everyone is struggling. SEO firm Conductor is giving the Internet Retailer 500 a 'D' for visibility in the SEO ranks. They are also waving the red flag at anti-virus companies, who only appear in the top five natural search positions about 5% of the time.

by Kristina Knight

Earlier this year Conductor released findings from the Fortune 500 ranks, indicating that Fortune 500 companies aren't faring well at SEO. According to that report only about 25% of Fortune 500 keywords rank in the Top 50 Natural Search Results.

First, the etailers.

According to Conductor research only about one-third of retailer keywords are appearing in the Top 50 Natural Search results. And, etailers collectively are spending about $1.2 million per day on their top 88 keywords with only a 33% appearance rate. Researchers further found that more than 90% of the IR 500 are not ranking about position 50 in natural search rankings. In fact, nearly 20% of internet retailers are all but invisible according to natural search results.

There is an upside: the web-only etailers - those without brick and mortar stores as well as online hubs - are more visible when it comes to natural search. Health and Beauty e-stores have the highest visibility of the retailer categories with 'Mass Merchants' receiving the least visibility.

Next, the anti-virus businesses.

"AVG as the industry search traffic leader, receiving the most traffic by far, nearly double second place Symantec. AVG's dominant traffic share was due in large part to their capturing the highest percentage of "free anti-virus" search traffic AVG also had the highest average daily paid search spend at $3,403, yet only 6% of their total search visits resulted from paid search," was written in the Conductor report.

For many anti-virus software firms, their name is their brand, so for their name to appear only 5% of the time is a problem. As a reference point, ten of the hottest anti-viral search terms account for more than 13 million monthly search queries.

Tags: Anti-Virus, Conductor Research, Fortune 500, Internet Retailer 500, SEO