Viaduct Generation, a mission-led award-winning SEO agency focused on supporting the online growth of Black, POC, and Allied businesses, have released their Annual Diversity Report for the year 2022.
The report is an endeavour by the agency to shed light on the statistics surrounding Black representation in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Page). When asked about the impetus behind the report, Fabio Embalo, CEO of Viaduct Generation, commented, “As someone that has been in the SEO industry for 8 years and worked with some of the biggest companies across industry verticals, I have never come across a single Black-owned business competing for the very top positions on Google.”
He continues, “Over the past 25 years, we've been creating this new world, what we can now call the ‘Digital World,’ and once again, just like offline, the Black community is being left behind. As SEO experts, we have the responsibility to ensure the online world is nothing like its offline version and create an equal playing field space. For this to happen, it is vital to spread awareness about the lack of Black representation in the SERPs and the report intends to do this.”
Methodology
The carefully crafted report takes into account 10 major industries such as the automobile, electronics, retail, beauty, kids and baby care, health and fitness, home, events, pets, and travel. The market leader for each of the above listed industries was discovered using market statistics such as market share and popularity of the business. As the next step, Searchmetrics was leveraged to rank the top 100 competitors for the market leader in each industry in terms of their search traffic. The final step of the research involved delving into the ownership of these companies and tracing the names, ethnicities and gender of the owners.
Key Statistics
The two major key statistics were that only 7 out of the 1,000 businesses were Black-owned and only 84 out of the listed companies were woman-owned.
Furthermore, there were zero Black-owned businesses in the top 100 businesses in the automobile, retail, beauty, health and fitness and the pet industries. The report also highlights that there are no woman-owned businesses amongst the listed companies in the automobile industry. The main reason behind the report containing only 5 Black business owners and 7 Black-owned businesses could be attributed to the lack of financial or business support received by Black-business owners. This puts them at a disadvantage when compared to businesses owned by peers from other ethnicities. In terms of SEO, most Black-owned businesses are unaware of the power of SEO, and if they do, they do not have the financial resources to support an SEO strategy. Another notable statistic is that more than half of the total number of women-owned businesses belong to the kids and baby care and events industry. Structural barriers and existing bias against women play a major role in the reason behind the existence of fewer women entrepreneurs.
Next Steps
The statistics from the report re-emphasises the importance of reconsidering existing structures in businesses and offering a level-playing field for everyone and especially for those from underrepresented groups.
Viaduct Generation believe the following suggestions would significantly help improve and address this issue:
- More diverse hiring at all levels - entrepreneurs and business owners often have a background in higher levels of management, giving them the necessary experience, network and confidence to launch their own ventures.
- Free resources targeted at underrepresented founders - for cash-strapped entrepreneurs, it can be difficult accessing entrepreneurial software or to have awareness of the latest methodologies and channels to increase revenue. Offering free resources to get them started will even-out the playing field. These can include workshops and events where entrepreneurs get practical training and insights to help improve their business.
- Mentorship and allyship - You can’t be what you can’t see. Underrepresented founders often have an additional barrier to entry if they cannot envision or learn from others that have been there before; there is a correlation between strong mentorship and the success of a business. Allies should go out of their way to recommend underrepresented businesses and put them in the spotlight.
The report by Viaduct Generation is thus an insight and a wake-up call into the unequal representation of ethnicities in business, in both the offline and online world. Although the research for the report has been extensive, it does not consider the entire gender spectrum, different sexual orientations or disabilities. The agency hopes to cover these and offer an inclusive and well-rounded report in their diversity report for the year 2023.
You can download the report here.
