This is the age old question: how much money do I need to spend to improve my search ranking? It’s complex at times and to be clear there is no magic formula, just the one I’m going to recommend which is essentially 20% of your marketing budget but let’s talk a little about what trips people up about SEO and how you should use that 20%.
Everyone wants SEO, right? Organic leads and sales coming into your business and you don’t have to spend continuous money on the product. It’s one article, one optimized product page and then you’re done. So why doesn’t everyone do it?
Lack of Knowledge. SEO is a big and vague concept. You can pour a lot of money into something that doesn’t ever pan out. Go after the wrong keywords and you’ve just wasted a lot of money. Pick the right keywords but your site is a technical mess? You’re left with small returns on a big investment.
Experts are Expensive. You want to bring in someone who really knows what they are doing? It’s going to cost. Big. Experts can charge over 10,000 a month depending on the size of the site. While we here at Loupe&Blade do friendly pricing we are far from the norm. And all that money you spend probably doesn’t fix your tech issues, doesn’t re-write product pages and doesn’t create new blog posts for your business. That’s a lot of money just for someone to tell you what the right answer is. I’m clearly not against hiring SEO experts but I get it: it’s expensive.
Time. Any SEO who will tell you that they can boost your site to Page 1 of Google is LYING. Any expert who says they can do it quickly is the biggest liar you’ll meet. Good SEO takes time. Patience and pressure arean SEO campaigns best friends. So putting money into something you might not see a return on in the next 6-12 months feels frustrating when you know you can use that money to spend on paid ads and see some level of return today.
Of course the only issue with that is at some point you put yourself into a hamster wheel of having to spend to acquire leads and that cost only tends to go up and you don’t have an organic lead funnel. But that’s a conversation for a different time and place.
Okay, so you want to spend money on search but why 20%?
Because 20% is enough for most marketing budgets to spend responsibly but still have plenty of money left over for ads and advertising on other channels. Just as you’d be foolish to ignore SEO, you’d be equally foolish to ignore every other channel that might help and support your business.
If you’re going to spend 20% here’s how I’d recommend you do it:
Keyword search. If you don’t know how to effectively search for the right keywords for your business then hire someone who will. There are SEO’s out there who will work on keyword research and content strategy. They can do audits of your competitors, look at your various pages and help you come up with the right target keywords.
Content Strategy. If you have a blog or are interested in exploring new pages then you might want to work with someone who knows how to find the right kinds of content that will drive leads and conversions. Just because you are an expert in your field doesn’t mean you know the right kind of content to rank high in Google or how to write that content so it converts. It’s important to work with someone who knows how to do that if you don’t feel confident in your abilities.
Content Creation. You need capable writers to execute on your content. Please work with someone who knows how to create the kind of content that draws the reader in.
Should You Spend Money on a Technical Audit
If you notice I didn’t mention this before because I don’t think it’s core for everyone. It’s hard to say if you need a technical audit but I will tell you if you have a site that only has a handful of pages it’s highly unlikely that you need someone to crawl your site and give you feedback. You’re better off spending that money on the keyword and content side of things. If you have a larger site or have noticed a significant dip in your organic traffic then a technical audit might make a lot of sense.
If Loupe&Blade can help you make important decisions, please let us know by getting in touch with us.
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