There may be a market for IT contractors to help small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to improve their search engine optimisation (SEO), following the publication of a new survey.

Conducted by agency dotSEO, a poll of marketers found that nearly a quarter of SMEs still don't know much about SEO, despite most people using Google as their first port of call for goods or services.

In addition, a fifth said that although they know what SEO is and how it works, they are not currently spending any of their budget on it.

Meanwhile, just 14 per cent of small firms think SEO is "strategically important" to their business.

"SME marketers in the UK are clearly unsure about the benefits of SEO, which in turn means they aren't making the simple changes to their websites that could dramatically affect their rankings," said Skip Fidura, digital director at dotSEO.

Research from digital agency Guava recently indicated that the number of firms looking to spend money on SEO has increased following the recession.