As an internet marketing consultant, you run across a lot of ideas about what the true cost of any service that you provide should be. I’ve heard horror stories of people involved with providing online marketing services under-cutting themselves over and over because the true value of those services couldn’t be explained to clients.
Today, I want to cover a few issues you might have. In preparation of purchasing an SEO package, or a social media marketing campaign service, or any other online marketing service, you might experience a few speed bumps.
Let me ask you these basic questions to start:
If someone offers you online marketing services for $10 Million would you take it? What if those services would make $20 Million to $50 Million in return? And, how long will those results last?
I’m sure you are seeing what I’m getting at here. The cost is not necessarily the exact SEO value. In the business world, this is goal…get the most value out of the costs. ROI (return on investment) is the primary gauge to use during this.
While it might not be the best method of determining whether your SEO costs are worthwhile to you, it can help to start understanding what the true value of search engine optimization marketing is.
A few examples of SEO ROI
SEO ROI and Online Marketing ROI (Internet Marketing ROI) are both metrics that business owners should see as more than raw costs. The return that you get might last for a few weeks for your brand, or could last for a year or longer. So, here are a few scenarios that I can present to you; some you have already experienced.
- Low Cost service, last only a few weeks and has limited changes and results
- One-time payment that sees a massive change, but only lasts a few months
- One-time payment that sees a massive change, and lasts for a while
- Monthly payments that sees a massive change, but lasts for years (length of brand)
Do any of these look familiar? Have you experienced any of these?
That might be your issue in hiring an SEO firm or SEO service…you start seeing the costs involved, instead of the value. In a way, you look at the $10,000 spent, instead of the $50,000 from those marketing dollars.
Remember, for online marketing ROI and SEO ROI, you need to look at the costs of the service, the time it takes for the actions you get, the recurring nature of the service and what the results actually are. Not every 3 month SEO campaign will yield results in that first year. You might have to wait until after month 12 or 18 before you see the true impact of all of the methods used.
Let’s look at some real parts of Pennsylvania SEO and internet marketing, and around the world, and why those actions hold an exponentially increasing value to you.
SEO results are not always fast
SEO (search engine optimization) is a very back-loaded operation when done for highly competitive terms in a big market. When you perform exclusively white hat SEO, you will see that those dollars spent today will have an effect over months and even years.
And this is key. While you are waiting to see results, you might not over a few weeks, you might see faint changes in a month or two, and it might take until month 4, 5 or even a half-year of SEO practices to get onto page one.
Ways SEO can help sooner
The biggest way SEO can give positive results sooner is by using local SEO tactics. If your brand is regionally serving its products or services, by creating local weight, you are creating organic search weight. What’s more, once most of these elements are accomplished, the results last as long as your brand will.
What do I mean?
A large part of coupling local SEO is mixing the regions served, with your brands user intent and keyword context. Once you do this right, search results will yield higher value because the correlation is made between the brand, and its message, services and products as well as those targeted keywords.
The other part is the citation and directory strength you will be building. If you haven’t started creating citations for your brand adn yourself, and haven’t started actively collecting feedback and reviews, do it today. Over the course of months and years, those could turn into massive weight in search results.
SEO ROI is usually over 100%
SEO ROI is usually a 1:2, and in most cases a 1:3 in terms of cost to return ration. When you think about this, that means that any money spent on a trusted service and a good SEO means that you will always see value.
Knowing this, the next step is getting a service that will last the longest, with the best positive outcome for you.
While no online marketing and internet marketing service has guaranteed return (SEO, social media, paid advertising and more), you should always be seeing a positive return. If not, it’s time to change your SEO firm immediately, and track the changes done for your brand. What might have happened was that previous SEO might have sacrificed speedy returns for long-term success – never a valuable method of search engine marketing.
SEO is ongoing (it’s a method)
SEO, a few years ago, used to be a specific part of a company’s internet marketing strategy. However, online marketing is a family. There should not be a focused part, and it’s never a ‘set it and forget’ type of action.
SEO, in terms of the actions to take, and the responses to Google search algorithm changes, create an organic set of methods to perform SEO correctly for more organic search traffic generation. These change. And, the best way to keep up to gain the most ground is to perform monthly SEO service on your brand.
Some parts include, but are not limited to the follow:
- Link building including outreach, PR, etc
- Social media participation to connect to influencers
- Onpage SEO changes involving linking, layout, etc
- Content marketing
- New content creation and targeting
- Various competition analysis and replication
Basically, the initial costs are to make your brand ‘correct and stable’. Monthly payments are to make your brand grow and become more and more strengthened.
Correctly performed SEO can last years
When SEO is done, you will see positive effects. When SEO is done wrong, you will see positive effects. Notice the difference? That’s because I didn’t mention the big issue…time.
Even incorrectly performed SEO and local SEO can yield success. However, it won’t last. And what’s even worse, badly performed SEO practices can yield search engine penalties and spamming issues.
Correctly performed SEO (usually referred to as white hat SEO), can yield results over a long time. This is because they follow a few rules that search engines, specifically Google, have outlined. They give your content structure, make your website and brand easily accessible to visitors and are not spammy.
And while quicker versions of SEO service might be cheaper and have results that will be seen immediately, by paying more for long-term service that is white hat SEO, will last as long as your brand could. Just make sure that your online marketing and organic search goals are in line with what that SEO consultant is recommending.
Current content SEO and onpage SEO can mean future benefits
Cost, and results, and time…that is what you should be looking at. However, the results can extend beyond what you actually paid for. What if the SEO is good enough that you are targeting a keyword or keyword group, and they went one step further and targeted related and contextually similar keyword groups to build user intent. You might be looking at your rank for keyword X, and keyword Y and keyword Z. However might have ranked you for the industry, creating even more weight for ANY keywords you target from now over the next years.
Plus, as your weight in search engines results pages (SERPs) grows, industry leaders, influencers and other influential members of the community on other websites are more welcoming to connect to and with you. This means more links, more mentions and more weight in search engines.
Everything above also yields the truest test of SEO and search engine marketing actions – quality organic search traffic generation. People are looking for particular answers to their problems, and are finding you. Because you have links from brand A, B and C, you have quality content and your SEO has done a great job, those visitors turn into leads and those turn very smoothly into paying clients.
More SEO value thoughts
Placing a true value on any service or product will lift the mist of the whole “cost versus value” argument. I’m sure you’ve experienced the same thing. You have a product or service that a client my say is worth “millions”, but you offer for a few hundred, along with solid care, support and speed. To your customers, the value outweighs the cost.
This is a problem when I tell a corporate lawyer, or luxury landscaping company, or a plastic surgeon that to get started on a solid online marketing campaign focused on SEO and organic search, that it could cost $2500 to start and $1200 a month for service. That is $17,000 a year! Ouch, right?
However, what if those dollars yield 10 or more new clients a year? What about 20 or 30 in higher population areas?
Well, if your average client is worth $5,000 a year, this could mean $100,000 a year in new client revenue. Now, is the $17,000 a year in SEO and search engine marketing work a value? That cost of under $17,000 made 500%…that is a terrific value.
So once again, if I could show you how to make $30 Million on a $10 Million investment, is that valuable to you?
Let’s talk SEO value today!
Are you ready to gain more clients and find more revenue from SEO sources? Do you want to find yourself with enough extra clients that hiring more employees is a must, not a desire?
Contact me today to discuss what I can do to help you with your online marketing and internet marketing goals, and how SEO and local SEO ties into those. You can contact me if you are interested in Butler SEO, Sharon SEO, SEO in Pittsburgh or New Castle PA SEO.
