According to the results of a recent survey conducted by Ascend2, “if you don't appear on page one of the search results, you don't exist.” To assuage this, the C-suite is paying attention to their organization’s organic search rankings, with 57% of marketing and sales professionals saying that quality content creation is one of the most effective SEO strategies employed by their company. SEO success is defined by the ability to achieve important marketing objectives. Only 14% of companies rate their SEO efforts “very successful” at achieving this. Success Rating of Current SEO ProgramRating% of Respondents Very successful 14% Somewhat successful 66 Not successful 20 Source: Ascend2, April 2014 Search engines look for quality content, and creating it is the most effective SEO tactic, says the report, followed by researching and managing the keywords used in SEO content. Most Effective SEO Tactics Used in Respondent’s CompanyEffective tactic% of Respondents Quality content creation 57% Keyword research/management 46 Frequent website updating 37 Social media integration 34 Frequent blogging 28 Link building 25 Local search optimization 17 Mobile search optimization 9 Source: Ascend2, April 2014 SEO is a time-intensive task requiring a specific skill-set, says the report. For many organizations, budget and skill limitations are the top obstacles to overcome. Most Challenging Obstacles to Achieve SEO ObjectivesChallenge% of Respondents Limited SEO budget 44% Limited SEO skills in-house 40 Understanding search algorithms 32 Lack of effective strategy 30 Attributing sales to SEO 29 Optimizing content with keywords 27 Lack of quality content 26 Identifying new keywords 18 Source: Ascend2, April 2014 Quality content creation is perceived as being both highly effective and seen as one of the most difficult SEO tactics to execute as seen by 47% of the respondents. Other difficult tactics to execute include link building, frequent blogging, and frequent website updating. Most Difficult vs. Most Effective SEO Tactics to Execute (% of Respondents) % of RespondentsTaskMost DifficultMost Effective Quality Content Creation 47% 57% Link building 44 25 Frequent blogging 32 28 Keyword research/management 29 46 Frequent website updating 29 37 Social media integration 26 34 Source: Ascend2, April 2014 The effect of keywords on search rankings and the impact of call-to-action offers on conversion rates are viewed as the two most useful SEO metrics (44% of respondents say each is among the most useful metrics for tracking and analyzing SEO performance). Most Useful Metrics for Analysis and Tracking SEO PerformanceMetric% of Respondents Search metrics by keyword 44% Call to action conversions 44 Traffic/visits by keyword 41 Traffic/visits by source 41 Total website traffic/visits 37 Website visit duration/engagement 28 Source: Ascend2, April 2014 The report is based on data from a survey of 442 marketing and sales professionals from around the world (63% US-based, 16% Europe, 6% Canada, 15% other). Additional study demographics include: Study DemographicsEmployee Size% of Respondents < 10 40% 10-100 27 101-1000 21 > 1000 12 Role In The Company Owner or officer 42% Marketing or sales management 35 Marketing or sales staff 15 Other 9 Primary Business Category Agency/marketing services 33% B2B (other than agency) 32 B2C 16 Both B2B and B2C 19 Source: Ascend2, April 2014 For additional information from Ascend2, please visit here.