Being an SEO I spend a lot of time reading and discussing various SEO and search marketing related issues. Most of the discussion is focused on either how to improve SEO efforts or bashing Google for their latest attack against humanity and all that is good. Very little attention is paid to the realtive cost of SEO services, at least in the SEO blogosphere.
On the other hand, cost can be an overriding factor to the organizations actually paying for SEO services, particularly in this recession. In many cases they are moving money away from another marketing department budgets such as print or radio. Naturally this leads to internal squabbles as the departments losing budget scramble to justify holding on to as much as possible.
The fact that SEO is an information-based service can make this a minefield for newbies to navigate. After all, there is no media buy so the spend is not as easy to quantify upfront as some more traditional offline investments. Often at the end of the day you end up with some businesses arguing over a few thousand dollars of spend on an SEO engagement without quantifying what the actual value of those dollars may be.
SEO is the Abstract Art of the Marketing World
Most marketing spends are easy to comprehend. Whether it’s a TV spot or a radio ad the marketer is buying media – they can see their ads in the newspaper or on TV or hear them on the radio. Businesses contract an agency which in turn buys a specified amount of media and reports the results back to the client.
SEO is different. Businesses are not buying media, they are buying the knowledge and skill set of the professional SEOs with whom they are contracting. This makes it seem a little like a “black art” and it can be difficult to justify to high-level executives who are used to an inventory-based view of marketing. SEO can seem like an abstract concept, so rather than finding out what the value of it is, they become focused on cost.
Myths About Measurement
Most businesses, especially large brands, have been spending millions in print and other forms of traditional media for years. These traditional ads are extremely expensive to buy and even more difficult to track. Sure, there are measuring services like Nielsen that track readers, listeners, or viewers but they rely on panels and sample audiences to construct their data, which is given in the form of an estimate. It does not provide any insight as to whether or not the ad is actually being seen or heard by the targeted audience.
SEO on the other hand can be tracked a number of different depending on the goals of the website. E-Commerce sites can track which keywords are not only delivering significant traffic but also show which keywords are converting into sales. Publishers who are interested in advertising revenue can see which keywords are delivering traffic and even the keywords that lead to more page views. With a decent analytics package businesses can easily see the impact of SEO from initial click through to sale, page views, lead generation, or almost any other metric the business is measuring. The ROI of SEO can be shown as a concrete fact unlike the return on a print campaign which relies on different models and assumptions to glean the ROI.
Not only is the ROI of SEO much easier to quantify it also has a much longer impact than a traditional media buy. Granted, it does take longer to see return from SEO work but this in turn lasts longer – if proper SEO policies are put into place the impact can be seen for years. With traditional media the return is seen immediately, in the form of the print ad or TV commercial, but once the money is spent the ads no longer appear. Businesses must continue to pay for every ad that is shown while SEO can keep your brand in the SERPs long after the money for SEO is spent. Even with this knowledge many large businesses continue to quibble over a few thousand dollars for their SEO while throwing millions at other less impactful marketing campaigns.
SEO=Value
When done right SEO can help businesses bring in millions of dollars in revenue over the long term while spending a fraction of that in the short term. Organizations that place importance on SEO are seeing the value from it and will continue to see it down the road. Those organizations that get hung up on quantifying the cost of SEO upfront will continue to lose out on the millions of dollars in profit that SEO brings down the road. Think about it: for the cost of a full-page color premium ad in the NY Times that runs one day, most businesses could pay for a full-scale SEO project and reap the benefits for months or even years.
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