Once you’ve decided on your target audience or user demographic, it’s time to do some basic calculations to see if hiring a professional service is right for you and your situation. In most cases an SEO consultant should be willing to help you evaluate your situation to see if it is worth it. Ok, so doing a load of calculations might not be a fun thing to do, if it can potentially save you money in the long run, it is well worth the trouble.
There are three basic quantities that factor into the equation:
1.) Customer Value
2.) Search Volume of your Target Keyword or Key phrase
3.) The Cost of Search Engine Optimization.
It’s easy to imagine that if you were able to rank #1 for all of your targeted keywords, the cost of SEO would be well worth it. While that might be the case in some instances, the answer is oddly not quite that simple. While the values above can give you a good example of how much money spent on SEO would be worth it, there are many other factors that also come into play. Site conversion rate, the lifetime value of a customer, but to get started let’s do some basic maths.
If you’re keywords have very low search rates, and you are only able to make about 100 euros a year from ranking #1 for all your keywords, then SEO will put you far into the red and is probably not a wise investment for your company. If the target ratio of profit for ranking #3 for your keyword is 10 times the cost of SEO, then that ratio would make it well worth the cost of hiring a professional to take care of your Search Engine Optimization needs as the profits far outweigh the cost.
In order to make an educated decision regarding the costs of SEO and the benefit it could have to your company, it is important for you to conduct accurate and complete keyword research. Otherwise, the calculations above are impossible.
The ability to find factual information and accurately calculate potential outcomes is one of the primary reasons many marketers prefer optimization to social media marketing. Although Social Media is an effective and useful tool, it is nearly impossible to accurately predict the outcome of a campaign due to the lack of detailed information.
In many cases a costly Social Media campaign might drive traffic to your site, but, but provides little if any actionable progress. Many online marketers make the mistake of investing large amounts of capital into social media campaigns that yield little if any outcome, target the wrong demographic, or are simply mismanaged. In many instances social media marketing companies sell website owners a host of features and specials that result in no earnings whatsoever.
Calculating the feasibility of SEO for your website can be much more accurate if you use PPC or Pay Per Click information. PPC is a great way to spread the word about your website; the downside is that it can be extremely costly with costs increasing exponentially every year. Because of low quality SEO providers who lead to Google penalties instead of high ranking sites, many site owners opt for PPC as a safer alternative. PPC can be very profitable, and some companies like Amazon for example, sink millions into PPC advertising every month. For small businesses, without the bottomless advertising budgets however, hiring a quality optimization service can drive the same traffic to your site for a much lower cost.
Understanding how Google & other search engines see your site is the first step to correcting any SEO issues and marketing your site for success. Knowing whether your site is indexed by Google, has incurred any penalties, is easily readable by Google or has strong on-page SEO is imperative to planning a strong campaign and the ultimate success of your website.