Industry Study: How SEO Impacts Everything from Brand Perception to Sales

Search engine optimization and brand reputation

The study looks at the present mindsets of 266 SEO decision-makers, including over 130 C-level executives and vice presidents. Several major insights about SEO and brand reputation emerged, among other findings

Forrester Consulting investigated major firms' SEO strategy . What they discovered may surprise you.


This gap in SEO frameworks at the top alters how businesses fund and implement their SEO campaigns. And this, in turn, influences their outcomes.


Important Points


  • Large corporate leaders are thinking too little when it comes to SEO.
  • SEO is a significant driver of both traffic and brand perception. Many marketers, however, struggle to integrate SEO throughout their entire marketing mix.
  • To maximise on SEO's potential across channels to effect business outcomes more generally, business executives must embrace a new way of thinking about SEO.

  1. Almost 70% of the business executives polled agree that SEO has a significant impact on brand perception.
  2. Nonetheless, many businesses struggle to make SEO a proactive, all-encompassing solution for brand management across departments.
  3. Companies that approach SEO as a brand marketing solution have the greatest success.

SEO is becoming increasingly crucial to executives. Four out of five CEOs say SEO is more vital today than it was two years ago, and that it will become even more crucial to their business in the coming year. Nonetheless, many people lack the knowledge required to maximise on the possibility to use SEO to have a broader impact on the organisation.


Opportunities for high-impact results were squandered.


There is still space for greater, more strategic use of search engine optimization across media. The survey discovered the following strategic shortcomings, among others:


  • When a brand-damaging event occurs, the majority of executives polled had a knee-jerk reaction to increase paid search, which has no long-term impact on search results or a brand's reputation.
  • Furthermore, most brands are lacking critical components of a comprehensive brand reputation management and SEO plan.

Long-term Return on Investment


Stridec clients see the long-term ROI of SEO in the millions of dollars in additional visitors and revenue produced.


There is measurable marketing ROI even from the standpoint of brand management. For example, our reputation management strategies assisted a national furniture store in recouping $32.7 million in monthly sales lost owing to online reputation difficulties. In another situation, we used reputation management to delete all negative content from the first five pages of Google results for a Fortune 500 CEO.


Because the executives who took part in the survey had a limited awareness of SEO potential, many businesses are still not completely embracing the comprehensive techniques that will provide them a competitive advantage.


Download the research today and:


  • Discover the relationship between SEO and brand perception.
  • Discover the chances that most businesses are passing on.
  • Get access to critical advice for long-term SEO success.