Unlike running ads or sending sales emails, SEO takes a lot of time and effort before producing results.
So much so that you might be wondering…
“Is SEO worth it?”
You might expect us to say “YES!”
However, the honest answer is far less exciting.
Whether investing in SEO is worth it or not all depends on your business.
Boring?
Well, that’s the truth.
That’s why in this article, we’ll take a look at some of the things you need to know to find out whether SEO is worth it for you.
Let’s dive in!
SEO is not a one-size-fits-all strategy.
Every business has different needs and different goals for SEO.
While all businesses can benefit from SEO – it is far more effective for some companies than others.
Will your business benefit greatly from SEO?
To answer that, here’s what you need to know:
The ultimate goal of any digital marketing strategy is to create revenue – one way or another.
While strategies like PPC try to get people to buy right away, SEO is higher up the funnel.
SEO is not directly responsible for converting someone into a customer. Instead, it’s much more about building brand awareness and trust.
The whole point of SEO is simply to get more traffic to your website through organic search.
What do we mean by high-quality traffic?
High-quality traffic means your target audience.
A good SEO strategy targets these people and brings them into your website in numbers.
Whether they convert into your customers now depends on your product and your sales team, not SEO.
Getting as many visitors a month as possible is vital for some businesses.
For these, their SEO efforts will receive a handsome reward.
These are the businesses where web traffic has a high chance of converting into a sale.
But wait…
Didn’t we just say that SEO isn’t tied to sales?
Well, yes. But the closer traffic is to sales, the higher the value of working on SEO becomes.
What do we mean?
Let’s say you’re into eCommerce – your sales will depend heavily on getting people to visit your website.
If you can’t get people to visit your website, you won’t get any sales at all.
That’s why appearing on search engines and organic results are super helpful for eCommerce.
However, if you do something like build air compressors for manufacturing use, high-traffic doesn’t easily translate into sales.
Yes, you will significantly spread brand awareness. People in the manufacturing field may learn about your company with SEO.
But nobody buys air compressors for manufacturing on-the-go, do they?
SEO is still helpful because your target audience now knows about you. But compared to eCommerce, your SEO strategy will be further away from sales.
So if you’re wondering if SEO is worth it or not, think about how important it is to have high amounts of traffic on your site – because that’s what SEO will give you.
Let’s say your business will get a lot from web traffic…
The question now becomes why SEO?
Why not do PPC?
Isn’t it faster?
One reason to choose SEO over ads is that people trust SEO and hate ads.
We’ve had ads for decades now, and most of us have some advertisement blindness.
The moment we see an ad, our brain immediately skips over it. Once we know someone is trying to sell us something, there’s a tendency to tune it out.
Contrast that to SEO.
When people use a search engine to find the answers to their questions, they almost always read the first article to show up on Google.
Why?
Because they know that Google will put the best answers on the top of the search engine results.
People know that anybody can pay for ads, but not everyone can create quality content that search engines will rank.
That’s why working on your SEO will build much more trust than spending for PPC.
We already mentioned this, but let’s repeat it:
SEO is a lot slower than ads.
If you get SEO services, don’t expect it to rank #1 for your target keywords right away.
When you pay for SEO, you’re paying for results that are 3-6 months down the line.
There’s also a LOT of effort that goes into SEO.
SEO is so much more than writing an article and sprinkling in keywords.
There’s also content strategy, on-page SEO, digital pr, link-building, and so much more.
You’ll need a team of experts to produce high-quality SEO that will rank your website for the keywords you’re going after.
Ads, on the other hand, are a lot simpler and produce results almost instantly.
Does this make them better?
Not necessarily.
That’s because:
Once your website successfully ranks for a keyword, it will stay there.
Unless several people write content far better than yours, you’ll stay ranking for that keyword for years to come.
And whenever people search for that keyword, they’ll end up on your website.
That’s why even though search engine optimization takes time to produce results, once it does, it’ll bring you organic traffic for a long, long time.
It’s not like other digital marketing strategies where once you stop spending for it, it stops completely.
Your SEO campaign will continue long after you’ve optimized your website.
That’s one of the things that makes SEO worth it for businesses.
With those five things, you should have an idea by now whether or not SEO is worth it for you.
But should you work on your SEO yourself?
Or should you hire an SEO agency instead?
We took a closer look at this question in our in-house SEO vs. hiring an agency article.
But if you want a quick answer, let’s have a look at some of the main points.
In-house SEO will work better for you if:
Hiring an entire in-house SEO staff will cost you a boatload of money.
You’ll need a professional content writer, web developer, designer, content strategist, link builder, and more.
But having all of these in house will allow you a lot of control. You can easily pop in and ask people for things with this setup.
On the other hand, if you want:
Then getting SEO services will be the better choice for your website.
With an SEO agency, you don’t have to worry about hiring professionals in every field.
Instead, you just have to work with one person, talk with them about your goals, and they’ll get their team to work on your website.
Unless you hire the best professionals around, an SEO agency can produce far better results than an in-house team.
They have all the tools and expertise to take a website from the ground up to the top of Google search rankings.
Last but not least, cost.
Whether SEO will be worth it for your website or not greatly depends on how much you’re willing to spend for it.
Good SEO marketing services will cost you around $1,500 – $5,000 a month, depending on your goals.
Some people wince at this number.
However, if you want results, that’s the price you’ll have to pay for it.
Be careful of companies that say they can get your website to the top of the rankings for less than $500/month.
Trust us, they’re either scamming you or using black-hat techniques (which Google frowns upon).
SEO is not the enemy of PPC, email marketing, or other digital marketing strategies.
Instead, if you use all of these together, you can build an empire online.
But with the amount of effort needed for SEO, you should consider everything about it first before going for it.
Remember that SEO is:
However, it also:
Think about those things.
Because yes, everybody can benefit from SEO.
But it may not be worth it for your business if you don’t have the time or money for it.
Now, if you’re sure you can get something from SEO.
If you can’t wait to get it started and enjoy the long-term results it will give your business.
Then grab our FREE website audit today and find out how you can start improving your SEO!