Is SEO really worth it?

Anonymous

September 5th, 2016

I keep hearing how important SEO is to capture leads organically. However, I have my doubts on the amount of time it takes to build good SEO and the quality leads that I will be able to generate from it.

Kim Albee Marketing Automation & Content Marketing Strategist

September 6th, 2016

Optimizing your website for inbound lead generation means you have content that resonates with your audience. Why not create great content with an eye towards getting ranked well by search engines?

Here's a blog post that might help your thinking: https://wpmktgengine.com/dont-waste-your-small-business-dollars-on-seo

If you have a blog (pretty much a must have), the content must be dialed in to your target audience, and either address an issue or pain point, answer a question they have, call forth an aspiration, etc.

It's possible to do (and learn to do) effective keyword research, and understand the competitive nature of them to find long tail keywords that could do quite well shorter term, and that can be optimized for based on the content you are assembling.

In addition, if you can do videos of your blog posts and put them on your YouTube channel, you could also help expand your digital footprint - while also embedding them on the blog post itself. Again, you'll want to optimize them for search leverage also. Here's a good post on optimizing your YouTube videos: genoo.com/blog/201502/YouTube-Metadata-Guidelines

If you approach SEO in this basic way and your content resonates with your audience, then if mostly you're driving traffic via Facebook ads, or Google Adwords, etc., to specific opt in pages, you'll have more that can engage visitors and build trust and authority, and can use email to more effectively nurture the leads you do acquire who don't become customers right away.

I wouldn't ignore the power of what SEO could do for you, or ignore some basics that would enhance your potential for being indexed well by search engines.

Ritesh Kumar Rai Technology will keep surprising you.

December 15th, 2016

Yes, It plays a very important role, but you need to have a good looking and informative website. So you can convert the lead visit into sales.

So apart from SEO website, response, color combination all is important.

Brad Forbush Need Leads for your Legal, Medical or Dental Practice? Let's Connect!

September 5th, 2016

Being an SEO pro I will say that I am a little biased. Without a doubt, there is a place for good SEO. With that said I approach all of my clients by looking into their business and seeing if good SEO is worth it for the business in question. SEO is not always necessary.

I have turned down plenty of prospective clients because the specific situation just simply would not require putting money and time into SEO. Sometimes the only thing needed is to simply optimize the existing website and content and send a few social signals and that can be enough to move the needle. Other times (in more competitive niches) it may mean you need a full staff of people keeping your eye on the competitive landscape that is SEO. The good thing is it is pretty easy to see when it is and when it isn't something you should focus on.

Here are three things to consider....

1. The Stage of your business... if you are a startup with a product you are still working on. It's probably too early for SEO.

2. Current Traffic performance... Have you found another traffic source? If so... How is it working?

3. Keyword volume... How much volume do your keywords get and are they intent based keywords or research keywords and do you want to sale through SEO or use it as an intro to the brand

Clearly, there are a lot more things to think about but this should give you an idea of how you can approach the question. The bottom line is with a little bit of research and discussion to determine what your business goals are you should be able to make an intelligent and educated decision as to where to put your time, energy and money.

satya parija Co-Founder & Head of Marketing and Business Development @DoctorSpring

September 6th, 2016

If you are a high-growth or change-the-world/VC-backed kind of startup, you must ignore SEO. It will eventually happen automatically given your press coverage. Just need to work on basic on-page.

For others,first find if your niche is intent-based or NOT .

If it is NOT intent based,it is bestto depend on other traffic sources(native or social) apart from SEO.

Even if it is intent based first validate your funnel and assumption via CPC. If that works,then only invest on SEO.

Nedko Nedkov Brandvertisor: Free Ads Management for Startups

September 6th, 2016

1. read on marketing blogs how to optimize your blog/website for seo friendly URLs & titles. - Neil Patel has great articles on the topic.

2. set up autosharing of your posts to social networks

3. research in Google planner on keywords and phrases for your niche

4. write titles around those phrases

5. make sure content is great & interesting, full of videos, images, analysis etc.. you need 1 article per search phrase/keyword to rank. You need content that is interesting and shareable! That's main factor for Google nowadays - to follow and estimate your social authority - if article is being shared it will rank higher. Mention famous of the day , their twitters, articles links or whatever.

6. push/promote your top blog posts over fb ads to gain initial viral effect.

Gluck.

Chuck Blakeman Founder, Chief Transformation Officer, Crankset Group

September 6th, 2016

I'm with Kim Albee. Make sure your website is built well (good HTML, etc.), then spend all your time, money, and energy on great content. The problem with SEO is that it optimizes for "search engines", when you should be optimizing for people/users. Create great content first (don't farm this out - do it internally); SEO a VERY distant second, if at all. I share this article with everyone who asks the question. Enjoy - https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2012/12/seo-the-inconvenient-truth/

Scott McGregor Advisor, co-founder, consultant and part time executive to Tech Start-ups. Based in Silicon Valley.

September 5th, 2016

If you are dependent on people finding YOUR company, and you expect that they will use a search engine to look for your company, then SEO is very important. If you are doing direct sales using quality leads you get another way, (e.g. outbound telesales) it wouldn’t be important.

Kai Larson Principal Consultant at SalesOnward

September 6th, 2016

Start with SEM, meaning buy some keywords from Google AdWords. If you find some keywords that really work for your business and are generating great results, it would make sense to start working on your SEO to get these leads for "Free."

Doing SEO can be really hard and expensive. I worked for a company that sold an SEO monitoring solution which cost upwards of $20k a year. We sold to companies who had a clear benefit from SEO. Online stores, travel sites, web properties, etc. who sometimes had teams as large as 50-60 employees toiling away on their SEO.

That said, if your space is new and there is not much competition for your keywords, it could be easy to rank really well for the keywords that matter to you. So, check out a small investment in SEM and test the waters.

Chuck Bartok Social Media Consultant, Publisher, and Contrarian Curmudgeon

December 14th, 2016

Our new website (100 days old) has been generating decent traffic and page views (about 4,000-5,000 daily) from organic Social Media and very little form "search".

We entered into an agreement with a very competent SEO consultant and the work he has done in past 3 weeks alone has benefited.

Of he had to re-think some strategy since we are looking for readers, not selling anything so some SEO rules are not as important.

Ron Warshawsky Founder and CEO of Enteros. Years of successful experience in startup business and database technology.

September 5th, 2016

Successful SEO requires significant time and research investment at a baseline. Going forward, it is extremely competitive and whatever works today most probably will stop working with the latest change in search algorithm, the activity of your competition, etc, etc (I mean "white hat" SEO of course).

As a bottom line, as Scott suggested, it fully depends on a nature of your business, B2B vs. B2C, who are decision makers, can you reach them effectively with SEO, etc, etc.