Industry2014 Industry Survey Reveals Salaries, Top SEO Tools & More

2014 Industry Survey Reveals Salaries, Top SEO Tools & More

Moz has released the results of their 2014 Industry Survey, which sheds light on salaries for various roles, top marketing activities and metrics, the top 10 SEO tools, and how marketers are dealing with "(not provided)".

Moz has released the results of their 2014 Industry Survey, which sheds light on salaries for various roles, top marketing activities and metrics, the top 10 SEO tools, and how marketers are dealing with “(not provided)”.

The data was once again compiled by Dr. Pete Meyers, who also compiled SEO industry survey data in 2012 and 2010 for the marketing software and analytics company formerly known as SEOMoz.

Salaries

The median salary for those doing SEO was $60,215, which includes data from countries that span the Americas, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia. The median salary for PPC was $69,010 and SEM was $64,460.

Here’s the full breakdown of salary by role:

Median Salary by Position Moz Survey 2014

Top SEO Tools

Google Webmaster Tools was the top SEO tool choice among all tools (paid and free). As you would expect, considering Moz collected the data for the survey, both Moz and Open Site Explorer fared quite well, coming in second and third place, respectively (Moz made note of this, noting that “as much as we love our own tools, we have to assume that our audience is a bit biased”).

The full list:

  1. Google Webmaster Tools
  2. Moz
  3. Open Site Explorer
  4. MajesticSEO
  5. Screaming Frog
  6. Bing Webmaster Tools
  7. Yoast
  8. SEMrush
  9. Ahrefs
  10. Firebug

Top Marketing Activities, Metrics & ‘(not provided)’

Content may be king, but web analytics was the top activity among all marketers, beating out content marketing, keyword research, social media marketing, and brand strategy.

“Interestingly, very few respondents (1.6%) listed their primary field as ‘Web Analytics’. Analytics are a way of life across all online marketing fields. Content marketing jumped a few spots (from #5 in 2012 to #2 this year), although this may be due to broader adoption of the term,” Moz explained.

Link building is no longer among the top five activities among respondents. Out of all the activities, marketers spend the least time on link removals.

What do marketers consider the most important metrics? Conversions topped the list, followed by revenue, leads, unique visits, and rankings.

“Rankings were still considered ‘Somewhat Important’ or better by almost 92% of respondents,” Moz noted. “They were still considered ‘Important’ or ‘Extremely Important’ by 73% of respondents. Rankings are far from dead.”

Speaking of metrics, now that search engines have stripped away keywords, how metrics are marketers relying on to deal with “(not provided)”? Here were the top five:

  • Conversion rate and performance metrics: 68.8 percent.
  • Landing page traffic: 66.2 percent.
  • Google Webmaster Tools data: 57.9 percent.
  • Estimated traffic based on other data: 40.5 percent
  • Social data (tweets, Likes, +1’s, etc.): 36.7 percent.

“It’s going to take a diversity of solutions to solve this problem,” Moz noted. “Respondents who track >100 keywords were more likely to rely on rankings and less likely to rely on social signals than those who track <less than 100 keywords.”

To can get lots more stats, including raw data, directly from Moz’s 2014 Industry Survey.

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