Fortune 500 Still Clueless About SEO, Study Says

Despite spending millions of dollars on paid search, Fortune 500 companies continue to fail when it comes to natural search visibility. That’s the conclusion of “Natural Search Trends of the Fortune 500: Q4/2009,” the latest study released today by Conductor, a New York-based SEO services/technology firm.

Some key takeaways from Conductor’s survey of Fortune 500 search marketing efforts include:

• Only 15% of Fortune 500 companies have “mid to strong presence” in natural search results for the same keywords on which they advertise the most.
• 53% have “no natural search visibility for their most advertised keywords” — meaning they don’t show up in the Top 100 results
• Collectively, the Fortune 500 spent about $3.4 million per day on more than 97,000 keywords, but they show up in the Top 50 of natural search results for only 25% of those keywords

That final statistic — showing up in the Top 50 natural results on 25% of overall keywords — is actually an improvement from the same study a year ago, when Fortune 500 companies only ranked in the Top 50 for 17% of their primary paid keywords.

Conductor worked with SpyFu to analyze the natural search results of the Fortune 500 companies, using the top five traffic-generating URLs for each company and the keywords they advertise on the most.