Over 500 people and companies who offer search engine optimization services were asked about how their models. Turns out, it’s most common to charge $100 to $150 per hour, in the US. But by-the-hour consulting is only one of four nearly co-equal ways of charging.

Also popular is project-based pricing, where the average price is between $2,500 to $5,000, in the US. That’s also the same average price for those who buy on a monthly retainer basis. Fixed prices on a contract basis is also a popular way that SEO is sold, but no averages were provided.

The survey was conducted by SEOmoz and compiled into the infographic below by AYTM:

Want the infographic for yourself? You’ll find it, along with more details about the survey and findings, at SEOmoz here: SEO Pricing: 600+ Agencies Share Costs of Services & Pricing Models.

Need to learn more about SEO? Then be sure to see our list of resources, including a background video, on our What Is SEO / Search Engine Optimization? page.

These stats and more are offered in an infographic the people at Onward Search, an online recruitment company, have put together:

Want the infographic guide for yourself? You’ll find it here: SEO Salary Guide.

These stats, along with many more — such as which social media platforms see the most use by marketers (hint: Facebook) — were compiled into the infographic below by the people at Webmarketing123, which backed the survey:

Want the infographic for yourself? It was sent to us as part of press materials today about the survey, which we covered in this story: SEO Beats PPC & Social Media For Generating Leads, New Industry Report Says. It hasn’t yet been posted online for others to use, but it might appear later on the Webmarketing123 blog.

Feeling you need to get started in SEO, PPC and social media? A good place are Search Engine Land’s overview pages:

• What Is SEO / Search Engine Optimization?
• What Is PPC, CPC & Paid Search Marketing?
• What Is Social Media Marketing

The numbers come from the 2011 State of Digital Marketing Report, which was compiled by Webmarketing123, a California-based online marketing agency. The company surveyed more than 500 U.S. online marketers in August and September; about two-thirds of all respondents identified themselves as B2B marketers.

Whether B2B or B2C, both groups of marketers agree that SEO has the biggest impact on lead generation. 57 percent of B2B marketers credit SEO as their primary source of generating leads, while 41 percent of B2C marketers said the same thing.

Both types of marketers say that website traffic is the primary way they measure the success of online marketing efforts. Brand awareness was at the bottom of the list for measuring success by both B2B and B2C respondents.

The survey asked a number of budget-related questions, including one about which channels get the majority of the marketers’ budgets. On the B2B side, one-third indicated that SEO gets the majority of their budget. But on the B2C side, more than 42 percent say that PPC gets the majority of their budget — about double the number of B2C marketers who said SEO is their top budget allocation.

Overall, 60 percent of respondents said they plan to increase their budget for social media marketing in 2012; 53 percent plan to increase their budget for SEO and 40 percent will increase their PPC budget.

Those increases in social media spending are likely field by another couple statistics from the survey: 68 percent say they’ve generated leads from either Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn, while 55 percent have closed deals from social media leads.

The 2011 State of Digital Marketing Report can be downloaded from Webmarketing123′s website. You’ll need to provide name and contact information. There’s also an associated infographic with many statistic, which we’ve posted separately here: Infographic: Digital Marketer Views On SEO, PPC & Social Media.

The Tech 200 ranks companies not based on overall revenue, but on sales growth between 2008 and 2010. Congrats to the following search marketing-related companies that we’ve spotted on the Tech 200:

• Slingshot SEO
• HubSpot
• SEOmoz
• Increase Visibility
• Yodle
• MediaTrust
• Fathom
• Covario
• eZanga
• Wpromote
• Location 3 Media

To be considered for inclusion, companies must submit their data to Lead411; there’s no cost to apply for consideration on the annual list. (If we missed any, please let us know in the comments.)

SEO: One Of Highest ROI Tactics

As part of this year’s list, Lead411 surveyed the companies to find out how they’ve grown their businesses. Although the respondents collectively spend only 13% of their marketing budgets on SEO, it was listed as one of the highest ROI tactics behind email marketing and trade shows, and more than double traditional advertising.

SEO was also the second-most popular tactic in use by these companies, with 74% saying they have budget set aside for SEO efforts. Public relations came in first, with 82% saying they include that in their budgets.

Who gets chosen? Inc. says, “The 2011 Inc. 500|5000 is ranked according to percentage revenue growth from 2007 through 2010. To qualify, companies must have been founded and generating revenue by March 31, 2007. Additionally, they had to be based in the United States, privately held, for profit, and independent—not subsidiaries or divisions of other companies—as of December 31, 2010.”

We were also pleased to note that numerous companies in our own search/online marketing industry made the list. Congratulations and kudos to these companies:

#33 – HubSpot
#40 – CPAlead
#48 – Leadnomics
#58 – Slingshot SEO
#74 – Millennial Media
#84 – Local Splash
#89 – eGumBall
#105 – Yext
#112 – Galaxy Marketing Solutions
#116 – RAMP
#118 – Likeable Media
#125 – TriAd Media Solutions
#130 – ymarketing
#137 – Yodle
#163 – Teknicks
#167 – Cloud 8 Sixteen
#183 – That! Company
#193 – PCG Digital Marketing
#219 – ChaCha
#239 – Capitol Media Solutions
#264 – Balihoo
#325 – Spring Creek Group
#360 – OrangeSoda
#372 – TriMark Solutions
#375 – Local Leads HQ
#418 – Search Influence
#472 – The1stMovement
#474 – G5
#481 – Levelwing #4007 – Vizergy

Did your company make the Inc. 5000 2001 list, and we didn’t mention you? Please let us know in the comments, below.

You can compare your answers to those questions and many others in the 2012 Search Marketing Benchmark Report – SEO Edition, which was recently compiled and published by MarketingSherpa. This 8th annual report includes more than 150 charts from a survey of 1,530 marketers around the world in April 2011.

This year’s benchmark report is divided into 10 chapters including “SEO Tactics,” “The Importance of Content in a Search Marketing Strategy,” “Integrating Social Media and SEO” and “Capitalizing on Local Search.”

Data are further segmented by “SEO maturity phase” of the respondents — i.e., how formal/developed they are in doing SEO — by primary channel (B2B/B2C), organization size and industry. To give you an idea what I’m talking about, let’s look at a couple sample charts.

SEO Tactics

The chart below shows all responses to the question, Which of the following SEO tactics has your organization used? As you can see, only 59% say they’ve done any external link building.

The report further breaks that down in several ways. The next chart shows the same data, but divided by the SEO maturity of the respondents. As you can see — and perhaps as you’d expect — those who have more formal processes for SEO (“Strategic”) are twice as likely to have done external link building as those without a formal approach to SEO (“Trial”).

There are additional breakdowns of this data based on channel, company size and industry; for example, the data shows that 70% of respondents in the Retail/E-Commerce industry have done external link building — compared to 60% in Media/Publishing and 52% in the Professional/Financial Services industry.

One statistic that stood out for me is that only 47% of respondents listed “Achieving or increasing measurable ROI” as one of their most important SEO objectives. Perhaps that’s a reminder of just how young and undeveloped this industry is as a whole. (If you’re curious, “increasing website traffic” was the top answer in this category with 72% of respondents listing that as their most important objective.)

Some other random data from the SEO benchmark report:

• The Software/SaaS industry is most likely to have a formal SEO process in place, while Education/Healthcare is least likely.
• External link building is the most difficult SEO tactic of all with 75% listing it as either “very difficult” or “somewhat difficult.”
• Content creation is the most effective SEO tactic — 92% said it’s either “very effective” or “somewhat effective.”
• 71% of all respondents said their “typical” ranking for “the majority of your targeted key terms” is on page one of the search results. 28% said their typical ranking is in positions 1-3.
• Only 9% said the quality of leads they get from organic search is “low.” But 57% said the quality is “mixed.”
• 67% are using a free web analytics solution.
• Local search is important to 74% of respondents, 18% of which listed it as “critical.”

The report also includes several sections where random, anonymous comments from survey takers are included — but these are mostly filler and don’t seem to offer much value. The real gems are the 150 or so charts that offer an interesting snapshot of the SEO industry as it exists today.

The full report costs about $400 (depending if you want a print version or just PDF), but you can get a taste of what’s inside by downloading a free excerpt from MarketingSherpa’s website.

The report came out on the same day that the IAB released its full-year 2010 online ad revenue figures. Interestingly, there’s a $4 billion dollar discrepancy between the IAB paid-search figures ($12 billion) and the SEMPO estimate ($16.6 billion) for 2010. The SEMPO estimate is for “North America” while the IAB numbers are US only. The IAB estimated the whole of Canadian online advertising was worth $2.1 billion CAD in 2010, however.

Survey results throughout the report are analyzed in terms of the separate responses of search/ad agencies and advertisers (or “companies”), which have slightly different perceptions as well as spending patterns — although they’re consistent directionally with one another.

Here is a selection of the survey’s key findings:

Significant market trends:

• Mobile: 79 percent saw the rise of the mobile internet as “highly significant” or “significant” and this percentage has jumped 14 percent since 2010.
• Local: 43 percent of agencies say local search is “highly significant” and an additional 41 percent call it “significant”
• Behavioral: 78 percent rated behavioral targeting “highly significant” or “significant,” up from 68 percent the previous year
• 95 percent of respondents (advertisers/agencies) advertise on Google AdWords

Social marketing:

• 84 percent of agencies say they use Facebook for marketing up from 73 percent last year; 74 percent of agencies say their clients run PPC campaigns on Facebook
• 75 percent use Twitter to promote their companies or brands
• 52 percent use LinkedIn for marketing, and more than a quarter (27 percent) of companies now use it for PPC
• 52 percent of companies said social media has had a “moderate” (41%) or “huge” (11%) impact on their search-marketing activity in the last year vs. 80 percent of agencies
• There has been a significant increase in the percentage of companies saying  social media is primarily aimed at improving customer service and satisfaction, from 8% in 2010 to 13% this year. Fewer companies than last year say social media is about generating leads (-4%), but 3% more agencies than in 2010 say this is the main objective

Outsourcing on the rise:

• 44 percent of companies do SEO in-house, compared to 51 percent last year
• 38 percent of companies are doing paid search in-house compared to 47 percent in 2010
• 55 percent are doing social media marketing in-house, compared to 62 percent a year ago

Microsoft -Yahoo Search Alliance:

• 22 percent of companies and 27 percent of agencies consider the impact to be positive; 8 percent have a negative view. The top perceived benefits: better ROI, cheaper PPC prices, more traffic volume
• 43 percent said that the Microsoft -Yahoo Search Alliance doesn’t have an impact on their search marketing activity

Overall the survey is a great snapshot of the SEM industry and its major trends. These data are merely the tip of the proverbial iceberg, so to speak.

The sample size was 400. The definition of “small business” was not disclosed.

It’s no surprise that most SMBs need help with online marketing. Regarding search marketing in particular the biggest challenges discovered were “identifying the right keywords” and “tracking campaign effectiveness.” However 44 percent of survey respondents said they didn’t need any help.

Forty seven percent of respondents handle SEM themselves, while 22 percent had a full time employee handling paid search.

The majority (75 percent) of SMBs don’t use any SEM tools to help them manage campaigns.

The survey found the average online annual marketing spend (search + anything else) was $5,260.

Two years ago Microsoft released a similar study that found only a small number of SMBs were engaged with search marketing:

• 59 percent of small businesses with Web sites don’t currently use paid search marketing, and of those, 90 percent have never even attempted it.
• Nearly nine in 10 (89 percent) feared keywords may become too expensive.
• Eighty-one percent questioned if paid search marketing is the best use of their marketing budgets.
• One quarter of respondents believe paid search marketing is too complex.
• Twenty-one percent thought it would be too time-consuming.
• Thirty-five percent felt they would need an agency to help set up a search marketing campaign.

Compared to the two-year old Microsoft survey data, the Amex findings argue progress is being made in terms of paid-search adoption by US SMBs.

Among the key findings, the survey reported healthy growth in demand for SEO. More than 70% of US respondents indicated an increase in demand for SEO services (nearly 80% in the UK). “This fits closely with the anecdotal evidence we see from our own experience and that of many of the consultants and agencies I have talked to,” wrote Will Critchlow, co-founder of SEOMoz’s sister company Distilled in his overview of the findings.

Consisting of 45 questions ranging from earnings, job title and responsibilities to tactics and tools, the survey paints a portrait both similar to and different from SEMPO’s The State Of Search Engine Marketing 2010 report. While the SEMPO survey focuses largely on high-level industry issues and trends, the SEOmoz survey dives more into the daily life-in-the-trenches aspects of working SEOs.

If you work as a practicing SEO, you’ll find interesting insights about what your peers are up to, including answers to the following:

• Which of the following SEO focused actions have you (or your company/team) employed?
• How do you distribute your time between different SEO-related tasks?
• Which SEO tools have you used in the last 12 months?
• How many different countries do you optimize for?
• How much money does your company spend on PPC each month?
• How much does your company spend on social media per month?

Want to know more? Download and view the complete results of the SEOmoz Industry Survey 2010.