The Web.com Small Business Digital Trends Report, created in collaboration with an Innovation Fellow in the Technology and Entrepreneurship Center at Harvard, Dr. David Ricketts, reveals that only 17 percent of small business owners are willing to invest in search engine optimization (SEO) in 2017.

Besides the small number of businesses that are willing to invest in SEO, the study also suggested that 85 percent of small businesses are hitting some kind of roadblock when attempting to use social media to promote their businesses. In other words, only 15 percent are effectively using social media to market their products.