Simpleview releases its 2022 edition of the State of SEO report

When the last edition of Simpleview’s State of SEO report for destination marketing organizations (DMOs) came out in mid-2021, we had just been through the most eventful year-plus in destination digital marketing (if not our lives). Website traffic that cratered at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic had just begun to soar to record levels when we published the report.

Fast forward to today, when the world, the industry, and the digital marketing discipline have been much calmer — but that doesn’t mean we’ve been in stasis. Multiple traffic trends have come and gone, with DMOs riding high on organic search gains before slumping and then recovering back toward growth. Through it all, destination marketers have sought to understand the broader trends affecting them and find growth opportunities.

We’ve updated this guide with fresh content that we hope you’ll use to learn and implement best practices for search marketing, demonstrate the value of your marketing efforts to stakeholders, argue for more resources where needed, and understand your destination’s performance in the context of the broader industry. Some significant updates for late 2022 include:

• Google Analytics 4 (GA4)
• DMO search traffic overview
• Revised content guidelines

Those are just the highlights. I, along with Simpleview’s team of over two dozen digital marketing experts, have used our decades of combined experience working with DMOs to ensure that this is the best possible guide to succeeding at search marketing in this industry. The entire team is certified in Google Analytics and collectively spends 30,000 hours annually optimizing DMO websites for organic search.

More than 160 destinations rely on Simpleview for SEO, making us the largest provider in the space and giving us the unique ability to compare our clients against the industry and their region. Because we only work in the tourism vertical and share knowledge through regular team brainstorming sessions, we are confident that we’re providing top-tier best practices in all we do.

We’ve all gained a great deal from helping destinations get their message out to travelers, and we hope our efforts will make your work that much more effective, enjoyable, and rewarding. Please reach out with any questions or suggestions so we can make the next edition even better.

Thanks for reading!

Paul McLeod