(Direct Newsline) — A new survey of Fortune 100 companies reveals that relatively few of them make a serious effort to optimize their Web sites to receive high search rankings on Yahoo! or Google.

The study, by the search engine optimization (SEO) marketing firm OneUpWeb, is the company’s third look at the search campaigns of the biggest brands in American industry, following surveys in 2002 and 2004. This year’s model finds some increase in the number of big names using SEO to get better natural search results: OneUpWeb detected that 13 of the Fortune 100 are expending a lot of effort to optimize their pages, compared to nine last year and only three in 2002. Another 45 are making “moderate” efforts to elevate their natural search results. But 42 of those top corporate names are taking no steps to make sure their Web sites appear in the top organic results of any search engines, according to Lisa Wehr, CEO of OneUpWeb.

That failure to optimize well, or even at all, caught Wehr somewhat by surprise. “I stuck my neck out after last year’s survey and predicted that the [nine well-optimized sites in 2004] would triple in 2005,” she said. “We definitely thought that the use of SEO would have spread more widely among the Fortune 100 than it has.”

“SEO just has not caught on to the degree we expected among the top companies,” she said. “It’s not that they’re trying to optimize and failing; it’s that many of them are not even trying.” She predicted that as many as 20 of the Fortune 100 might have well-optimized Web sites a year from now — “but that’s a generous assessment.”

She attributes this failure to a number of factors. For one thing, these big brands may assume that customers are searching for their Web sites using their brand names as keywords. Research suggests that’s not true, Wehr says; a lot of buying research begins with generic terms, not brand names.

These top brand names may also find it simpler to buy either placement in search results pages or pay-per-click ads than to take the many programming steps involved in site optimization for search.

Finally, Wehr said, some large Fortune 100 companies may see search as a “narrow marketing funnel” that does not have the market reach of TV, radio or print advertising. But that exposes a portion of their market share to poaching by competitors, including much smaller ones who understand the true value of search as a part of the buying decision.

“Ironically, this survey may be good news for mid-range companies competing with these brands,” she said. “If you can do search optimization well, you stand a good chance against these big names.”

The 2005 OneUpWeb survey looked at a range of indicators to determine whether companies had optimized their Web sites for higher search rankings. Some of these fall into the “best practices” category. For example, the firm looked for unique title tags; meta-description and meta-keyword tags that used words or phrases relevant to the brand, Web site or page; relevant keywords in the body text of a page; link anchor text using relevant keywords or phrases, and other evidence of good linking strategy. None of the companies in the Fortune 100 are OneUpWeb clients.

Since the study was looking for evidence of any kind of SEO, it also searched for less reputable optimization strategies, those that many consider unfair manipulation of the search indexes: cloaking, spamming with non-relevant keywords, and invisible text. “We don’t at all endorse using those techniques, Wehr said. “But we checked for them in order to get a view of the full scope of search engine optimization activities in this group.”

The baker’s dozen Fortune 100 sites that OneUpWeb identified as doing a good job of SEO showed “clear and effective” optimization campaigns, Wehr said. Ten of the 13 came up in the top ten natural search results within their categories on Google. Those 13 SEO stars include American Express, Allstate insurance, General Electric, General Motors, SBC Communications, and Walgreens.

OneUpWeb also found that 42 other brands from the list do a “moderately good” job of optimizing their sites — that is, they deploy some of the tools, but don’t appear to have a comprehensive SEO campaign in place. This group actually declined a bit in comparison to the 2004 survey, which found 47 “SEO moderates” among the top 100 brands. Twelve of this year’s group of 42 moderates were among the top ten Google results in their categories, despite their relatively un-optimized sites.

The proportion of big-brand Fortune 100 sites without any discernible optimization at all grew by one from the last survey to 45 this year, after declining from 53 in 2002. Seven of those non-optimized sites still managed to rank in the top 10 for their categories under a Google search.

Wehr stressed that the survey only looked at the mechanics in place for making a Web page rank high with the search engines; a really good SEO campaign is also tailored to suit a company’s business objectives and overall marketing message. The OneUpWeb survey did not take those elements into consideration.

One finding from this year’s OneUpWeb SEO survey is that a large number of sites that do little or no optimization also use Web analytics to track consumer traffic and behavior on their sites. In fact, 40% of sites with no optimization use Web analytics, compared to 36% of sites that are moderately optimized.

“They seem to be taking measurements, but they don’t then know how to have an affect on what they’re measuring,” Wehr said. The reason for this disconnect may be that many companies make Web metrics a responsibility of the IT department rather than the marketers.

“If the marketers know they have analytics available, they may not have time to look at them,” she said. “If they do look at them, they may not know what they’re looking at — what the analytics mean and how they can use them.”

Wehr said her firm may make this look at SEO among the Fortune 100 an annual project. “We make do it yearly, as long as it seems useful to us,” she says. “Apparently, judging by these results, it may not be useful to most of the Fortune 100.”

A new survey of Fortune 100 companies reveals that relatively few of them make a serious effort to optimize their Web sites to receive high search rankings on Yahoo! or Google.

The study, by the search engine optimization (SEO) marketing firm OneUpWeb, is the company’s third look at the search campaigns of the biggest brands in American industry, following surveys in 2002 and 2004. This year’s model finds some increase in the number of big names using SEO to get better natural search results: OneUpWeb detected that 13 of the Fortune 100 are expending a lot of effort to optimize their pages, compared to nine last year and only three in 2002. Another 45 are making “moderate” efforts to elevate their natural search results. But 42 of those top corporate names are taking no steps to make sure their Web sites appear in the top organic results of any search engines, according to Lisa Wehr, CEO of OneUpWeb.

That failure to optimize well, or even at all, caught Wehr somewhat by surprise. “I stuck my neck out after last year’s survey and predicted that the [nine well optimized sites in 2004] would triple in 2005,” she said. “We definitely thought that the use of SEO would have spread more widely among the Fortune 100 than it has.”

“SEO just has not caught on to the degree we expected among the top companies,” she said. “It’s not that they’re trying to optimize and failing; it’s that many of them are not even trying.” She predicted that as many as 20 of the Fortune 100 might have well-optimized Web sites a year from now — “but that’s a generous assessment.”

She attributes this failure to a number of factors. For one thing, these big brands may assume that customers are searching for their Web sites using their brand names as keywords. Research suggests that’s not true, Wehr says; a lot of buying research begins with generic terms, not brand names.

These top brand names may also find it simpler to buy either placement in search results pages or pay-per-click ads than to take the many programming steps involved in site optimization for search.

Finally, Wehr said, some large Fortune 100 companies may see search as a “narrow marketing funnel” that does not have the market reach of TV, radio or print advertising. But that exposes a portion of their market share to poaching by competitors, including much smaller ones who understand the true value of search as a part of the buying decision.

“Ironically, this survey may be good news for mid-range companies competing with these brands,” she said. “If you can do search optimization well, you stand a good chance against these big names.”

The 2005 OneUpWeb survey looked at a range of indicators to determine whether companies had optimized their Web sites for higher search rankings. Some of these fall into the “best practices” category. For example, the firm looked for unique title tags; meta-description and meta-keyword tags that used words or phrases relevant to the brand, Web site or page; relevant keywords in the body text of a page; link anchor text using relevant keywords or phrases, and other evidence of good linking strategy. None of the companies in the Fortune 100 are OneUpWeb clients.

Since the study was looking for evidence of any kind of SEO, it also searched for less reputable optimization strategies, those that many consider unfair manipulation of the search indexes: cloaking, spamming with non-relevant keywords, and invisible text. “We don’t at all endorse using those techniques, Wehr said. “But we checked for them in order to get a view of the full scope of search engine optimization activities in this group.”

The baker’s dozen Fortune 100 sites that OneUpWeb identified as doing a good job of SEO showed “clear and effective” optimization campaigns, Wehr said. Ten of the 13 came up in the top ten natural search results within their categories on Google. Those 13 SEO stars include American Express, Allstate insurance, General Electric, General Motors, SBC Communications, and Walgreens.

OneUpWeb also found that 42 other brands from the list do a “moderately good” job of optimizing their sites — that is, they deploy some of the tools, but don’t appear to have a comprehensive SEO campaign in place. This group actually declined a bit in comparison to the 2004 survey, which found 47 “SEO moderates” among the top 100 brands. Twelve of this year’s group of 42 moderates were among the top ten Google results in their categories, despite their relatively un-optimized sites.

The proportion of big-brand Fortune 100 sites without any discernible optimization at all grew by one from the last survey to 45 this year, after declining from 53 in 2002. Seven of those non-optimized sites still managed to rank in the top ten for their categories under a Google search.

Wehr stressed that the survey only looked at the mechanics in place for making a Web page rank high with the search engines; a really good SEO campaign is also tailored to suit a company’s business objectives and overall marketing message. The OneUpWeb survey did not take those elements into consideration.

One finding from this year’s OneUpWeb SEO survey is that a large number of sites that do little or no optimization also use Web analytics to track consumer traffic and behavior on their sites. In fact, 40% of sites with no optimization use Web analytics, compared to 36% of sites that are moderately optimized.

“They seem to be taking measurements, but they don’t then know how to have an affect on what they’re measuring,” Wehr said. The reason for this disconnect may be that many companies make Web metrics a responsibility of the IT department rather than the marketers.

“If the marketers know they have analytics available, they may not have time to look at them,” she said. “If they do look at them, they may not know what they’re looking at — what the analytics mean and how they can use them.”

Wehr said her firm may make this look at SEO among the Fortune 100 an annual project. “We make do it yearly, as long as it seems useful to us,” she says. “Apparently, judging by these results, it may not be useful to most of the Fortune 100.”