How Economy Affected SEO and Internet Marketing

We were curious about how economic conditions affected the world of Search Engine Optimization Companies and/or Internet Marketing Companies. So we did a little research to see how things panned out in the business of SEO and Internet Marketing.

The only statistical data that we were able to find related to the companies was from SBA and it was from 2005 to 2009. Furthermore, we only looked at data from Google for the total searches of the keywords (or keyphrases).

Our objective was to see what happened to the certain searches as economy bottomed out.

First we looked at how many companies were opened during those years. Below graph indicates how the number of opened companies decreased due to the obvious reasons of the economy:

On the top of that, the number of companies that were closed was increased (again for obvious reasons):

Let’s now take a look at the total searches for “SEO Company”, “Search Engine Optimization Company”, and “Internet Marketing Company” (note: these are the broad searches).

SEO Company

Despite the fact that the rate of companies opened was decreased, and the rate of companies closed increased, search for “SEO Company” had an increase.

Search Engine Optimization Company

Even though there was a spike in 2008, it leveled off in 2009. Nevertheless there is still a steady increase (rather than decreasing with the economy).

Internet Marketing Company

This search phrase had a steady increase throughout the years, despite the fact that the economy had a fall out and companies were closing.

We are no economists or statisticians but one way to interpret this data is to note that even though the economy was quite bad, and many companies were closing, while not many companies were opening at the same time, there was a steady need for SEO and internet marketing companies. We are pretty sure this has a lot to do with internet shifting the playing field of marketing from offline to online.

On the top of that, it is a safe bet that social media has also had a great impact on this matter. As the value of it increased, many companies started focusing on creating relationships online rather than offline. This in turn may have a profound impact on increased search (or need) for SEO Companies and/or internet marketing companies.

We are pretty sure there are many other factors causing this, and also many other conclusions that we can drive from this data. Our aim was to show that internet marketing and SEO are here to stay, and we can pretty much guess the growth of this industry will be exponential as the economy gets better.

Let us know if there are any more impacts you can think of…???