Does it really worth it to invest time and money in SEO as the search engine algorithms continue to change and paid marketing offer businesses instant, and quick result?
Many people make claims that SEO is dead but before you can call it dead or before you can know if it is worth your investment and resources, you must first of all set the goals you are willing to achieve with your investment, as SEO goals vary from business to business.
2020/2021 was the year that made a lot of companies and people realize that SEO is more important than ever as both companies and people are being forced to inherit a more online-focused lifestyle.
In this article, I want to reflect on the current state of SEO in the advertisement industry.
SEO is not as many claims it is. It is not a static marketing product nor is it a magical answer to the problems that might be facing your business.
It is like a science, a marketing practice that constantly evolves with the help of humans to notice potential dangers, trends, and patterns.
SEO Marketing Campaign has three important qualitative factors to look at before you make the decision of if it will be needed for your business or not, or if it will be worth the time and money investment.
Read on to know if SEO is worth your money and time investment.
What SEO Marketing Can Do For Your Business
You must have heard that SEO can grow your business's bottom line, this can only be successful if all the marketing methods are aligned correctly.
SEO is not a straight factor for increasing your business revenue, but it is a strong indirect factor that will help your business generate new opportunities for revenue growth.
What SEO Marketing Does.
SEO marketing is a marketing method of driving organic traffic to your business website by the use of keywords in the search engines and also providing a valuable user experience to website visitors.
User experience is a very important and relevant ranking factor in SEO.
Google draws a lot of attention to it in their recent switch to make website speed a direct ranking factor for Search Engines.
In order for SEO to increase your sales, your website will have to be optimized to handle organic traffic from the search engine result pages and funnel them to sales.
It is the only way you can send organic and non-paid traffic to your website.
Types of SEO Marketing Services
1. On-Page SEO
The very first type that I usually talk about is on-page SEO.
On-page SEO is a strategy that deals with the on-page elements of your website such as your website copy, title tags, keywords, headers, meta description, images and so much more, which plays an important role in your website visibility.
Keywords are necessary for your website's on-page SEO optimization which helps the search engine to understand what your website is all about and how to serve it to online users.
Before you optimize your website for keywords you need to conduct keyword research with an SEO tool like SEMRush, on the keywords that are related to your business niche and industry.
To make the most out of your keyword research you need to mix keywords with high volume and relevance and keywords with low volume and high relevance.
Writing high-quality content on your target customer’s keywords will improve your website ranking in the search engine results pages (SERPs).
Stuffing your web content with keywords is a black hat SEO practice that will have a negative impact on your business.
This is the reason why you need to hire a professional if you find it difficult to come up with quality content that will help your website ranking.
2. Off-Page SEO
The second in line is off-page SEO.
These are website optimizations that are done outside of your website.
It is basically about creating trust and visibility for your website which will help your website to generate more search engine traffic from your target customers.
Off-page SEO techniques will enhance your website domain authority so that it will increase the credibility of your website.
It also increases the authoritativeness of your website to improve your website rankings in search engines.
It is really different from on-page SEO technique that is primarily responsible for ranking your website in the search engine results pages.
Off-page SEO work is mostly focused on building backlinks from third-party websites that are related to your business.
Earning quality backlinks from third-party websites that are related to your website will make the search engine trust your website which will help your website's visibility and rankings.
Any backlink that you earn from high-domain third-party websites will serve as a vote of confidence for your website; this means that your website is authentic and informative.
If you are new to online marketing, listed below are few ways you can earn backlinks from third-party websites;
3. Technical SEO
Technical SEO is an optimization that is done to enable search engines to crawl your website and to enhance your website user experience (UX) so that your website will provide the best experience to your target customers.
In an attempt to provide the best experience to online users, search engines frequently update their algorithms.
These frequent algorithm changes make technical SEO an ever-evolving work to do.
You must be efficient with your website's technical optimization so that search engines will not have any problem crawling and understanding the structure of your website.
When doing technical SEO for your website, you need to part attention to the following:
- Website speed
Faster website speed increases business sales because it provides the best user experience to your website visitors.
It also reduces your website bounce rate which will allow your target customers to convert better.
Because websites with speed provide online users with a better user experience Google has made it an important search engine ranking factor.
- Mobile-Friendliness
With the high number of online transactions, and with the long hours of time that people use on their phones.
It is now a necessity for businesses to build websites that is mobile friendly so that their target customers will be able to reach them on their phone.
- Site structure
seamless website structure is also an important ranking factor that Google uses as a ranking factor.
You need to secure your website with HTTPS hypertext, you also need to have a clear URL structure, easy navigation, and a seamless internal linking structure that will provide the best user experience to your website visitors.
4. Local SEO
Local SEO focuses on helping businesses with geographical locations to increase their visibility in the search engine.
It focuses attention on improving business visibility in their area of presence.
With local SEO you can promote your business products or services to local customers that are situated around your physical location.
Most times, the proper way you rank on Google search engine depends on how perfect your Local optimization is.
Google My Business profile is a better way for your business to become visible to your target customers that are near you.
Google My Business allows you to include your business address, work hours, business description, and pictures of your business products.
GMB also makes it easy for your customers to write reviews about your business products or services.
Lots of positive reviews from your past customers will also play an important role in outranking your competitors and increasing your visibility.
Benefits of Local SEO include the following;
Organic Traffic or Paid Traffic. Which is better?
Some business owners and marketers think paid traffic is better since it is faster, while other business owners consider quality traffic from their potential customers better.
Furthermore, a lot of business owners consider the cheapest traffic to be the better option.
This will make us break down SEO traffic into three categories.
SEO Marketing Delivers Slower Traffic Than Paid Ad
If your website loading time is slow your SEO investment will likely not deliver lots of conversions to your business.
SEO marketing takes time, and your website speed will be part of the ranking factor that will earn your business website popularity.
Millions of websites go online every single day and your website is probably one of them so your website need is necessary for you to stand out.
If your website speed does not get you customers then you can opt-in for paid advertising as it will be a better alternative to deliver you a result, but paid advertisements are expensive and can only deliver short time results, unlike SEO Marketing which delivers slower traffic but gives lifetime results.
SEO Marketing Delivers Higher-Quality Visitors Compared to Paid Ads
A lot of netizens don’t usually trust ads. And the ever-growing list of online ad blockers shows marketers that people are fed up with internet ads, ad blindness is a real thing and it is rapidly growing.
More than 75% of people will happily skip and scroll past ads to see organic results in search engine result pages because people have a lot of trust in organic results than paid advertisements.
This trust in organic results is what will bring a lot of people to your website.
The visitors know that your website visibility is earned by the relevancy of what your business has to offer them and not that you paid for it to show up.
As long as you are targeting the right search queries on the search engine and providing value to your website visitors through content, your conversions will be higher with SEO Marketing compared to a paid advertisement.
If the quality of your business website visitors is important then SEO is worth it because those quality visitors convey a better sense of trust in your business than the visitors that come through paid advertisement.
SEO Marketing delivers more cost-effective visitors than Paid ad
Paid advertisement also known as paid ad is expensive and is mostly used by medium and large businesses to drive more results apart from other marketing campaigns.
Paid ad let you pay a certain amount of fee each time a netizen click on your ad.
This means that if anybody sees your ad online and click on it, you will pay for it.
Paid ad campaign cost depends on the quality of your ad campaign and the competition in your business niche.
With paid ad cost in mind, you might end up paying $1.00 per click, and it can go up to as much as $50 per click.
On the other hand, SEO marketing is not expensive like paid ads.
If you can get your website to rank on the first page of the search engine result pages, you will begin to receive organic traffic to your website from all over the world.
Unlike Paid ads, you don’t pay for any clicks to your website through SEO marketing.
If your marketing budget is small and you want to compete with the big players in your industry, then SEO marketing is the cheapest and best option for you to compete and make your mark.
If you did not have a huge advertisement budget like the big players in your industry, SEO will still give you the desired result as it gives each business level playing ground on the search engine result pages (SERPs).
Let’s say your marketing budget is small and you are currently spending $10,000 per month on your ad campaign.
A good SEO strategy will allow you to spend less on ads and you will start getting free website visitors from search engine organic search results.
Because it is cheaper than paid ads, it also gives you the opportunity to divert your small marketing budget on other things “remarketing” that will help increase your business sales.
In this case, I think we are right to say SEO is worth it. If you want to generate quality website traffic and acquire quality leads without breaking the bank then SEO is worth it.
The Cost of SEO Marketing
Let us first forget about the low cost of SEO.
It is a huge investment for your business because you are building and developing a website, and content that will last as long as your business lasts.
Every dollar you spent on your business SEO campaign will deliver relevant results that will stick with your business.
Unlike Paid ad campaigns that will give you instants result, the result disappears the moment you stop putting dollars into it.
How Much Should You Invest in Your SEO Marketing Campaign?
The amount of money you will spend on your SEO campaign depend on your business industry.
Typically, your budget should be between $300 - $500 for local SEO, low-competition.
While multi-location, national, international, and stronger competition SEO fees start from the range of $3500 - $15,000 per month.
The right SEO investment will also depend on your marketing goal, the lifetime value of your customers, how you are currently spending your advertisement budget and how much you can afford.
Is SEO Marketing Worth the Investment Of Time and Money?
If you have the money, SEO is an investment that you should start sooner rather than later.
Time is really valuable when doing SEO, the longer you delay in investing, the longer it will take to enjoy the free traffic your competitors are already enjoying.
Even if you are a solopreneur, you still need SEO to enjoy the benefit of free traffic from the web.
So to answer your doubt question, YES, SEO Marketing is a valuable and important investment for businesses that want to succeed.
By investing in SEO, you are building an asset for your business.
It is one of the most effective and cost-effective digital advertisement techniques that will help your business to promote its products or services to your target customers who are online.
It is also a great advertisement method for lead generation without spending fortune on advertisement.
With an effective SEO strategy from an SEO professional, you will outrank your competitors in the search engine and you will also earn the trust of your target customers which in turn will result in an increase in sales for your business.
What are your thoughts?
Did you notice a drop in your business customer acquisition since you started your SEO campaign? Have you gotten both higher and lower website traffic from your SEO Investment? Or are you confused about how you can start or not?
Feel free to contact me and let’s discuss how you too can increase your website's organic visibility and traffic.