Getting Your SEO ROI
I’m sure you’ve probably noticed the economy is taking a tumble (to say the least) at the moment. A lot of individuals and small businesses are carefully watching their accounts and pocket books to ensure that they’re protected in this uncertain economic time. With concerns about the economy left and right, wanting a good return on investment in your SEO is understandably a concern. Here are some tips to ensuring that what you invest in SEO is well done and increases your ROI:
Understand what you’re paying for. Knowing what you’re paying for is critical. You want to know what services you’re receiving and how your money is being spent. An understanding of how and why changes are being made on your website is also important. This way, you’re not in the dark about anything.
Develop a plan. Don’t rush headlong into your internet marketing. Lack of focus won’t achieve you any long-term results that really pay off. You may see a short term gain, but it’s not the success your website really needs. Instead, develop your plan of action. This will ensure that you implement SEO and any other online campaigns in ways that are more likely to bring you visitors and conversions. Think also about your website’s design and functionality and where you’d like to see that long term. Do you need more content for users and search engines? Are site visitors looking for a shopping cart?
Read your reports. And discuss them with your SEO team. We spend time looking at your analytics and traffic patterns, and you should know what makes your website work and not work. Again, this is something that you’re paying for, so you should know as much as possible about your website and what needs to be done with it to ensure long term success.
Give it time. That may be hard to hear, especially with economic news so dire. You’re eager to see your return on investment and show your boss, or your banker, that what you’re doing is paying off. However, the search engines don’t crawl every page every day. It can take them time to get around to visiting and indexing your site and any changes that you make (especially if you have a brand new domain or an old domain that was not very active). Search engines can take months to update their indices and bring you the consistent organic search results and resulting traffic you’re looking for.
These may seem like common sense guidelines on getting your ROI, but sometimes it’s good to refresh these ideas and revisit them. Like any business plan, SEO is something that should be approached with a good roadmap and clear plan of action.
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All are very valid points. I would like to add that for any company that is new to SEO and is evaluating potential SEO firms there are some critical questions to be asked.
1) How long has your company been in business? Be wary of new companies, companies with recent name changes, or that give vague answers to their history.
2) Can you give me at least 5 current clients who can attest to your SEO skills? Always check references!
3) Who will do the SEO on my site and what is their background?
And the real proof is to visit the prospective provider’s website to see what they offer. Next, VERY IMPORTANT, is to do search engine checks for their website for terms like “SEO company (their city)”. If they can’t get their own site ranked well you can’t believe that they will do any better for you.
The bottom line is verify everything that you are told. As with any industry there are a lot of salespeople that can talk-the-talk but they can’t walk-the-walk so Buyer Beware!
Comment by Jim Hobson — October 7, 2008 @ 11:23 pm
Thanks for your comment, Jim! You also bring up some other good basic points to consider before you jump into any SEO program with an individual or company. For anybody just now beginning SEO, they really should do their homework before hand.
Comment by Dana — October 9, 2008 @ 8:58 am