For the third year running, Guava and Econsultancy bring you the UK Search Engine Marketing Benchmark Report - an insight into the workings and developments of the industry.

In spite of the economic climate, investments in SEO, paid search and social media are increasing and look set to continue doing so.

Some key findings were as follows:

Search engine optimisation (SEO or natural search) is the digital channel where companies are most likely to be investing more money, with 55% of respondents expecting an increase in their budgets this year. Just under a third of respondents (31%) say that SEO spending will stay the same and only 6% say there will be decreased investment.

The research also found that 45% of responding organizations are increasing their budgets for paid search. Only 11% of respondents say they are decreasing their spend on pay-per-click marketing, for reasons which include click cost inflation and lower conversion rates caused by the credit crunch.

The picture is less positive for online display advertising, although there are still more organisations (24%) who are increasing budgets than there are companies cutting back (16%).

The report also reflected changes in the social media sector:

Twitter, in particular, has shown phenomenal growth. Last year only 3% of responding organizations said that they were using Twitter in their marketing strategy, compared to an overwhelming 49% this year.

Facebook is now being used by 65% of companies as part of their marketing efforts.

The full E-consultancy / Guava UK Search Engine Marketing Benchmark Report 2009 is available for download at: http://www.guava.co.uk/uksem2009