Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an essential element of a complete marketing strategy. Most companies usually invest at least 10% of your annual marketing budget to this strategy because of its potential to drive long-term growth. However, most businesses have, at best, a cursory understanding of how SEO works. Additionally, there are several expensive and frustrating misconceptions about SEO that must be dispelled in order for business owners to get a solid ROI for their efforts.
Misconception: SEO is just about putting the right keywords on your website.
Fact: Even though SEO is 29% of the top trends marketers use, many companies don’t understand how it works. To understand SEO, you must first understand Google’s mission, not its algorithm, but its mission. It’s quite simple: Google wants to connect its users with the most relevant, reliable and correct answers to their queries. If Google can do this, users keep coming back, clicking on their ads, and Google generates revenue.
With the mission in mind, a company’s website should have content that answers the questions that relevant users ask. If a Google user is looking for a lawyer after a car accident, the firm’s website had better have enough content on its website to answer the questions the user is asking. And the content must be accurate.
Also, the website must have credibility and be technically sound. There is a lot of technical expertise in SEO, which is why most companies choose to work with an SEO agency.
Misconception: All businesses must use SEO to be successful.
Fact: SEO is simply not for everyone. Depending on a company’s budget, size, geographic market competition, and other considerations, SEO simply doesn’t work for every business.
Any business considering SEO needs to have realistic expectations from the start. If they’re a startup in a large market with dozens of established competitors, they’ll need an aggressive marketing budget to run a successful SEO campaign.
Lindsey Busfieldone of the leading SEO experts in the legal marketing industry relates, “If you look at SEO like real estate, the closer you get to the big cities, the more expensive it will be to rank. That’s because you’ll need a lot more content and domain authority to move the needle with Google So, to succeed in your industry with SEO, you’ll need to adjust your budget to meet the market or move your location to a less competitive location.
While SEO can generate a high ROI for some businesses, for others it is wiser to invest in other types of marketing campaigns.
Misconception: SEO as an additional service
Fact: There are several marketing agencies that offer SEO as an additional service for a few hundred dollars. However, many of these agencies fail to deliver meaningful results. They might add a company to a directory or throw some keywords into the metadata, but none of that will actually move the needle in terms of search results, especially in saturated markets.
For most businesses to run successful SEO campaigns, they need to work with SEO agencies that specialize in this form of marketing. This is especially true in niche industries, such as legal or medical, where Google has special regulations on how they rank these websites on the search results page. For these highly regulated industries, working with an SEO agency that specializes in a particular niche can yield better results than a generic marketing company.
Misconception: SEO will work immediately
Fact: SEO takes time. Sometimes SEO takes a lot of time. Depending on the industry, market and budget of the company, SEO can take six months to a year, or more, to get results. This is an additional barrier for smaller companies to invest because almost 80% of agencies only work on a monthly retainer.
However, companies that can afford to invest in SEO for the long term can get an exceptional return on their investment.
Busfield notes, “For many of the law firms we work with, a typical case is worth about $2,000. Obviously, some cases are worth much, much more. If they’re spending $10,000 a month on SEO and they’re getting 10 new cases a month, then they’re seeing an incredible return.”
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