Will SEO Work For My Company -- Finally, The Truth

What you will learn: Whether or not SEO is a good Internet marketing option for your business.

Who should read this article: Company leadership, marketing leadership.

SEO Will Not Work for Every Company

You heard it here, from an Internet marketing company that sells a lot of SEO services:

SEO is not a good Internet marketing option for every company.

Unfortunately, some SEO companies are more interested in selling SEO services than in delivering SEO results. Because of this, a lot of clients have been burned, and if you’re reading this article, you are worried about getting burned.

Don’t get burned; instead, get perspective. This is how you can tell whether SEO is a good option for your business – or whether an agency is trying to rake in easy fees at your expense.

Not Enough Organic Search Demand

For an SEO campaign to produce enough sales leads or e-commerce revenue to justify the investment, a critical mass of search volume for your relevant keyword phrases must exist. If only a handful of people conduct searches for your product or service, you’re unlikely to get enough leads to justify the cost of a campaign.

The reasons for low search demand vary. Sometimes it is because your product or service is extremely niche. It could be because you are selling in a limited geographic region or to a limited segment of the market.

The most important thing to remember: If an SEO company tells you they’ve done keyword research and identified strategically important keywords, ask to see the search volume associated with those keywords.

There’s no point spending thousands of dollars a month to be on the first page of Google for search terms nobody is using.

Adequate Demand, Inadequate Budget

Here’s another harsh reality of SEO: If you want to get anywhere, be prepared to pull out your wallet. When a reasonable amount of organic search demand exists for your keywords, a budget of $500 or even $1000 per month will not even make a dent in the competition.

Why is this the case? Suppose you start a $500 per month SEO campaign. Being a “bare bones” campaign, deliverables will be limited; let’s say in this case limited to one offsite article per month (in order to build your link profile).

Offsite articles are an excellent SEO technique; in fact, for most campaigns they are imperative. However, there is no agency in the world produce one offsite article a month for $500 and make a profit. Creating a strategy, research, writing, editing, proofreading, outreach, managing client edits, managing publisher edits and maintaining publisher communications take far more time and expertise than meet the eye.

In 99.9 out of 100 campaigns such as this, the SEO company takes shortcuts: skipping the strategy, hiring untrained copywriters and editors, not being selective in where the articles are published, etc.

Shortcuts add up to a campaign that at best does nothing to improve your organic search visibility, and at worst actually worsens your visibility by violating Google rules and/or SEO best practices.

The most important thing to remember: If it appears you don’t have a budget big enough to support SEO, don’t despair. You may be able to craft a strategy that easily justifies a larger investment. And, there are other types of Internet marketing such as display retargeting or email that may fall within your budget and are capable of producing significant results.

Want to find out if SEO makes sense for your company?

Call us at 855-883-0011 or request a quote online.