Only 13 of The Fortune Top 100 American companies have web sites well-optimized for search engines, says a new study from Oneupweb, a search engine optimization and marketing company.
“Corporate America is just not getting it,” says Lisa Wehr, president of Oneupweb. “SEO has changed the way people do business. By not optimizing, you are putting your company at a competitive disadvantage.”
This is the third time Oneupweb has studied web site optimization of the largest corporations. In 2002, the study found three Fortune 100 companies used search engine optimization effectively; in 2004, the number was nine.
According to the latest study, 10 of the 13 sites placed in Google’s top 10 for searches in their respective core products and services. Of the 42 corporate sites with moderate levels of optimization, 27% were in Google’s top 10. Of the 45 sites with no optimization, only seven were in Google’s top 10, Oneupweb reports.
Among the other factors that Oneupweb considered in determining which sites were best optimized for natural search, apart from appearing in Google’s Top 10, were: • Unique title, meta description, and meta keywords tags, incorporating important keywords and phrases. • Adequate text content (above and beyond the home page), also incorporating keywords and phrases. • Absence of technical issues that can prevent search engines from crawling and indexing the site. • Text- or image-based site navigation (in addition to or instead of non-spiderable Flash or Javascript navigation). • Comprehensive sitemap, linked directly from the homepage.
While the study focused on optimization for natural search results, it also reported that many of these sites rely on pay-per-click advertising to gain search visibility.
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