State of Search Engine Optimization and Social Media 2012 [Infographic]

Everyone knows that search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the main players in internet marketing. But how has it evolved in the past year? How has the internet marketing industry as a whole changed?SEOmoz CEO Rand Fishkin and HubSpot CTO Dharmesh Shah discussed the results of the SEOmoz annual industry survey today. The survey specifically aimed to highlight the state of search engine optimization, internet marketing, and the marketing profession in 2012.

Key takeaways from the survey:

• 44.4% of respondents professed either “advanced” or “expert” social media ability.
• Google+ is the #3 most popular social media network. (Google+ has historically been plagued with the “useless” label when it comes to generating social ROI, so one theory behind this ranking could be the high impact Google+ has on SEO.)
• 74.1% of marketers use LinkedIn for branding.
• 60.2% of marketers are looking for analysis and analytics options in their social media management tools.

Overall, social media is alive and well and continues to grow rapidly. While many marketers are still trying to understand how to leverage social media to drive sales or other results, certainly a large group of marketers is hard at work with these new tools. A snapshot of some of the key points from this survery is below.