You know that having an online presence is incredibly important to grow your business and compete with your rival companies, so you hired a website developer VA, a social media VA, and a content writer VA to establish your web presence. But now they’re telling you that you also need an SEO specialist to really hit the ground running. What does this mean?
When business owners get advised by their developer or digital marketing specialist to invest in SEO, many of them either follow the advice blindly or instantly become skeptical and think that this is another unnecessary expenditure. For the most part, this is because a lot of business owners don’t really know what SEO entails and what it can do for their business.
Here’s a simple explanation of what SEO is and how investing in SEO can help your business.
What is SEO?
SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is a way to increase the number of visitors to your websites and ensure that you’re attracting the type of visitors you actually want. In short, it’s all about increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your site.
How does this differ from online advertising?
The biggest difference is that you don’t spend for SEO the way you would on ads. In online advertising, you buy the ad space or pay depending on the number of views or clicks that your ads get. With SEO, you pay your specialist an hourly rate or a fixed amount per project and let them do their magic. The results of their work don’t affect the price, so if your SEO specialist is truly amazing, they can give you immeasurable returns.
In fact, if you learn about SEO yourself and do all the strategizing and implementation, you can even say that SEO is free. Of course, it takes a LOT of time and effort to become an SEO expert, so you’re really better off hiring someone who already knows their stuff.
SEO ROI
There’s definitely no fixed return on investment for SEO because different companies have different strategies, which obviously leads to vastly different results. There’s no precise metric to measure SEO ROI by as well. You can measure by conversions or actual sales that came from a click on your page that was boosted by SEO. You can also measure by clicks to make it simpler. It all depends on your goals.
In general, many experts agree that compared to other online marketing tools like Adwords or Pay-per-click ads, SEO costs are much lower and the returns you get are more than just monetary. Unlike ads, appearing organically (not paid) on search results pages builds trust in your audience. They know that you got on top of the results because you’re a legitimate business that’s relevant to their search, not because you paid to get there.
SEO is something that will probably always remain a mystery, at least partially, to many business owners. The important thing to know is that investing in SEO will cost you a small amount but return a great deal in customer trust, brand awareness and recognition, and potential sales. Good SEO yields noticeable results, so even though you don’t know what goes on behind the scenes, you will definitely know if your investment is worth it.
A collaborative post with:
Catherine vanVonno is the President and CEO of 20four7VA, a trusted remote staffing company. She oversees the overall growth and success of the company, leads the short and long-term strategies, and manages the company’s finances. She also directs the management team regarding daily operations, brand management and marketing, client relations, strategic planning, and business development.