Every business has a budget. Sometimes that budget includes very little for digital marketing and sometimes it’s a lot more generous. Either way, there’s a finite amount they can spend and they expect (or hope!) to get as much for that money as possible.
When it comes to SEO a lot of businesses don’t know how much of their budget they should use. There are costs attached to creating content, running Adwords campaigns, paying someone to manage SEO generally, or outsourcing to an agency. Money can’t buy results but it can help you build a strong digital marketing strategy when it’s used well.
Find out how much search volume you could get
Some businesses and niches have a huge potential search volume (people actively searching for what they do) while others don’t. One way to find out your potential search volume is to make a list of likely keywords and check their search volume using Google’s own tools.
If there’s very little coming up and you’re already doing well with other marketing channels, SEO might not be the smartest investment. However, if loads of people are searching for what you do and you’re not in the results, that’s a significant potential audience you’re missing out on.
Check your existing marketing person/team’s skills
Whether you have one marketing manager or a team of a few people, their SEO knowledge could be excellent or it could be patchy. The more they know and are willing to learn and invest in SEO, the better your strategy will be. If they’re not very skilled or experienced they’re going to need some help, particularly with the technical SEO stuff that requires a bit of expertise.
Talk to your marketing person or team about their existing SEO strategy (if they have one), what they think it should look like, and what you need to do to help them make it happen. If they need help, this can come in the form of a consultant or an agency that can do the research and campaign execution for you.
Investing in SEO helps you in other areas too
SEO involves a lot of audience and market research, keyword research, seeing your website from different perspectives, analysing social media data, and much, much more. These insights have value across the board, helping you to understand your online presence better and make the most of it, as well as getting you closer to your customers and clients. Investing in SEO is investing in every part of your business’s growth.
Remember, SEO is a long-term strategy
Whatever you invest in SEO it has to stay consistent and be affordable over months and years. SEO is a long-term, cumulative strategy that builds trust and results over time, so anyone advertising ‘quick wins’ should be avoided. It’s much better to invest a small amount of money into long-term core SEO activity, like building up on-site content and fixing bugs that cause problems with Google, than to do a quick, expensive burst of activity for a few months and then expect dramatic results. The tortoise definitely wins this race.
We’re one of the UK’s leading marketing agencies, Our team of SEO experts help businesses get found on top search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo. Get in touch with us for help with your SEO strategy.
