The following is from a post by Rand Fishkin on SEOmoz: undefined

There’s a big disconnect in the way marketing dollars are allocated to search engine focused campaigns. Let me highlight: 

Not surprisingly, search advertising should continue to be the largest category, growing from $9.1 billion in 2007 to $20.9 billion in 2013.- Source: C|Net News, June 30, 2008OK.

So companies in the US spent $10 billion last year on paid search ads, and even more this year. How about SEO?

SEO: $1.3 billion (11%)- Source: SEMPO data via Massimo Burgio, SMX Madrid 2008According to SEMPO’s data, it’s 11% for SEO and 87% for PPC (with another 1.4% for SEM technologies and <1% for paid Inclusion).  

Conclusions: SEO drives 75%+ of all search traffic, yet garners less than 15% of marketing budgets for SEM campaigns. PPC receives less than 25% of all search traffic, yet earns 80%+ of SEM campaign budgets.      

 Where are your marketing dollars going?   As told in the story by the above numbers, the majority of Search Marketing dollars are by far being spent on PPC as opposed to SEO.  If SEO drives 75% of all search traffic, the obvious questions is WHY???  

When deciding where to spend the marketing budget, there is one all important factor – ROI. SEO outscores PPC by a long shot of page visibility and clicks, and yet people continue to make poor decisions on where to allocate their marketing budget.  Many people can grasp PPC easier, and their instant gratification itch is scratched.  But it is a severe mistake not to invest in SEO for the long run.