Is Your SEO House In Order?

Search engine optimization has been around since search engines were invented. As a result, many marketers regard SEO as an “old marketing tactic.” We hear many reasons for deprioritizing SEO. That it is too expensive, not fun, too time-consuming, not enough money left over after a website redesign, and it is too hard to stay current with best practices.

We are here to change your mind.

We see SEO as an integral part of your content strategy to attract traffic to your website. While there are substantial variances of search queries depending on the industry, the average website can expect to receive about 50% of its traffic from search queries on Google.  If your company is getting less than half of your traffic organically, there might be a tremendous opportunity to improve.

Here are six reasons to rethink how much you invest in SEO today.

1. SEO does not have to be overly time-consuming

We do not want to minimize the time and effort to effectively implement a comprehensive SEO strategy. Typically, we will spend 50-100 hours on the effort. We recommend that our clients commit to about 25-50 hours in strategy discussions and to review our work. These SEO efforts usually take a month or two to complete. However, once complete, SEO maintenance only requires minimal updates. Many companies ignore maintenance and as result, their initial efforts will lose effectiveness. A good rule of thumb is to dedicate at least 10% or more of the upfront time for monthly SEO maintenance, depending on how often you are updating your website.

2. It is not actually expensive

Search engine optimization efforts often seem expensive because of the upfront costs. However, it not that expensive if one prorates all the SEO costs over 24 months which is about the time we recommend between a full SEO strategy implementation. Let’s see what this looks like in practice. First, for every dollar you spend on the upfront costs, we recommend that you should spend at least 10% on monthly maintenance. So if you spend $6,000 on upfront costs, you should spend about $600 a month in maintenance. If you prorate these costs over 24 months, it works out to about $800 a month or about 13% of your initial outlay. Could you fit those costs into your budget?

3. SEO is not that fast

Marketers often expect immediate results from their search engine optimization efforts. We believe it is unfair to compare it to other tactics like social media marketing and email marketing which operate differently. It usually takes at least 3 months to see search engine rankings improve and it often takes 4-6 months. But the slow progress is actually a good thing because once your keywords start ranking highly, it is hard to displace them.

4. It is not too late to get started with SEO

Even if your competition has gotten a head start ranking on top keywords, it is never too late to catch up. Being methodical and consistent with your SEO efforts will win over time. Do not get discouraged and think of the tortoise, not the hare.

5. It is not the time to quit over a bad experience

Many marketers have been burned by unscrupulous vendors or inexperienced professionals. Therefore they are hesitant to make too many changes to their SEO. We recommend asking for full transparency with the work. Remember, there is no secret sauce with SEO – there is just thoughtful strategy, best practices, and staying the course.

6. It is not necessary to address every update from Google

Google makes changes to their algorithms all the time. However, over the past two decades, the fundamentals of SEO have not changed much. Create relevant and engaging content, post new content frequently, increase quality backlinks, optimize your website, etc. Stick with fundamentals and keep up with Google the best you can.