Is SEO Worth It?

Business owners and managers are often sceptical of search engine optimisation (SEO) when considering their marketing budget. “Is SEO really worth it?” They ask, and we understand why.

Unlike paid ads, there’s no easy, platform-specific performance dashboard that compares daily spending with sales revenue from conversions. SEO on the other hand takes time.

A lot of businesses conclude that SEO won’t work for them, but the data shows a completely different story.

Did you know that 61% of B2B marketers stated that SEO and organic traffic generate more leads than any other marketing initiative? Or that SEO can reduce the cost of customer acquisition by 87.41%on average compared to digital advertising? Crazy right?!

Let’s just say, if you’re going to invest in one marketing channel, you should invest in SEO. Here are our top 4 reasons why SEO is worth it and why you should start investing in it now.

1. SEO Is an Investment in Your Brand Unlike Paid Ads

Pay Per Click – widely known as PPC – is a great way to get a quick return on your investment. It is a type of internet marketing that involves advertisers paying a fee each time one of their ads has been clicked. Simply put, paid search marketing puts your website in front of your customers. With paid advertising, you’ll only see an increase in traffic if your ads are running. Whereas with SEO, the investment you make at the start will still be felt YEARS later. Slow and steady wins the race!

However, it isn’t to say that PPC is bad in any way. PPC is a great way to kickstart your digital marketing whilst waiting on your SEO to work.

SEO is one of the greatest investments that you can make for your business. By investing in SEO, you create long-term value for your website that will continue to grow over time.

It should also be noted that SEO will take time. Results do not happen overnight, and you will have to wait to see these results. If an SEO agency promises overnight results, they are not to be trusted because that is simply not how SEO works.

If you’re wanting to invest in SEO, then you need to prepare yourself for an initial period – usually 3 to 6 months – where you’ll be investing time and money with minimal results in terms of sales.

2. SEO Enquiries are Sustainable and Not Short-lived

If your business sets up paid advertising, your business instantly becomes visible in search results. You will see the impact of your PPC efforts almost immediately, whereas SEO can take a lot longer. However, as soon as you turn the PPC campaigns off, your traffic stops. Here’s where you need to think if your site will survive without those leads.

With SEO, the visibility of the business is not transient and so neither are the enquires. There is no off-and-on switch with SEO. Enquiries will keep rolling in and not be ‘switched off’ suddenly.

With PPC marketing, your website will stop appearing in search results as soon as your marketing budget dries up.

A great way to remember this difference is by thinking in terms of real estate. SEO is like owning your traffic whereas PPC is like renting it.

3. Your Website Has the Potential to Grow Every Year with SEO

With SEO, your website will grow year on year with fresh new content that is added to your website. SEO experts can optimise individual web pages for you to rank higher and earn more relevant traffic in search engines.

Fresh, regularly updated content improves the SEO of a website, driving traffic whilst also improving website authority on search engines like Google and Bing.

You don’t need to focus on constantly pumping out new web pages or content either. Chances are you’ve already got a backlog of old content sitting there on your website, waiting for an update.

Editing old content that has already been published on your website with new, fresh keywords is a great way to generate results.

4. Google is Looking for E-A-T, and SEO Consultants Can Help You Understand This

First, you might be wondering what is E-A-T? E-A-T was first mentioned back in 2014 when Google added the concept to their Search Quality Guidelines.

It stands for Expertise, Authority and Trust and is one of the many guidelines Google uses to determine whether the content you produce is valuable to readers and whether it should rank well.

Essentially, E-A-T is one way Google tries to ensure that it returns accurate, truthful, useful information to searchers and not ‘dodgy’ content.

When we boil it down, Google is trying to evaluate the:

• The expertise of the creator of the content.
• The authoritativeness of the creator of the content, the content itself, and the website.
• The trustworthiness of the creator of the content, the content itself, and the website.

Don’t worry if you don’t completely understand what this is right now and what you must do, this is where your SEO consultants come in. We can advise you on how to pivot your website to this.

The greater your ability to follow and apply the E-A-T standards to your content, the greater your chance for organic search engine visibility and ranking success.

So, Is SEO Worth It?

We think the proof is in the pudding. Our clients, Machine Polishing, received 31% higher organic traffic to their website in the space of just 5 months with our SEO efforts. A significant increase. Again, with another one of our clients Pinnacle Fitness, down to our SEO efforts, their website received a 400% increase in organic traffic in just one year.

Although SEO takes longer than PPC, organic search is still worth the time and effort. It’s quantifiable, it’s a long-term strategy, it attracts more click-throughs than PPC, it’s relatively inexpensive, and overall, organic search results are much more trusted than PPC adverts. You won’t see the results overnight, but in the long term, your business will see many benefits.

In 2022, SEO is not going anywhere. As long as search engines exist, SEO will never die. If you’re not investing in SEO already, the time to act is now.

If you have any questions about SEO campaigns or SEO in general, get in touch and we would be happy to help.