Is SEO A Good Investment?
When SEO is viewed as a medium to long term investment, it can be the single best use of a company’s marketing budget. Like any investment, if you go about doing SEO in an intelligent way, it is likely to serve you well. On the other hand, if you don’t pay much attention to it, asking an intern to handle it in their spare time or hiring the cheapest SEO company you can find, it can easily fail.
If you were thinking of making an investment in residential real estate, you would want to go about it in the right way – researching the local area of the house, considering the uniqueness of the property, and assessing its condition. You wouldn’t just go on a real estate website, find the least expensive house, and buy it. Similarly, it helps to have a basic understanding of how SEO works before you make an investment in it. SEO in 2015 requires knowledge of a few basic rules, but beyond that, it is essentially a matter of creativity and hard work.
To ensure that your investment in SEO goes well, make sure that you are working with a team that views thought leadership and link building as the keys to attracting new business through organic search. In addition, your team should be laser focused on conversion optimization because organic traffic that doesn’t convert is just a waste of time. You should stay away from any team members that view SEO as a bag of tricks or haven’t updated their knowledge of Google’s algorithm in the last few years.
Where SEO turns from a good investment to a great one is in phenomenal content combined with consistent online outreach. Your content developers should be subject matter experts who are passionate about the subject they’re covering (while also understanding the basics of writing good title tags). The more unique, inventive, and well-researched an article, white paper, infographic, or other form of content is, the more likely it is to be picked up and passed around by your industry and potential customers. Inspired content is also far more likely to attract links. Not to mention, when people are interested enough to fully read a piece of content, they are more likely to want to learn more about the company who produced it.
Creating a truly phenomenal piece of content even once is a challenge to most marketing teams – but being able to do it week after week is the difference between a middling investment and a booming one. If you can find a team to produce top-quality thought leadership content consistently and share it regularly, you have the formula for an investment that will blow away other forms of marketing. But that’s a big “if.”
Now you can see why we made this entire process into a service.
Evan Bailyn is a best-selling author and award-winning speaker on the subjects of SEO and thought leadership. Contact Evan here.
