6 Point Checklist before investing in SEO

Investing in Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is expensive and time-consuming and is not suitable for every company or business sector. To determine whether your company should invest in SEO, there are a number of things you should consider to make sure it will be a sound investment. This checklist will help you ensure you do not fall into the trap of being sold SEO services when the return on investment case is not clear.


The 6-Point Check List

1. Are there enough searches being done on relevant phrases to justify investment in SEO?

The justification for SEO depends on several factors including; how broad your products/services are, and the size of target market using search engines to locate your type of product/service.

For example, a software company with a broad product range, selling globally would naturally have much greater potential Return on Investment from SEO than an office cleaning business that operates within a small local area.

If you invested in an expensive SEO campaign and achieved some great first page rankings for relevant search phrases, at first you might be happy - but if these phrases are not being search for sufficiently to drive enough visitors to your site, then you will gain little benefit.

Let’s assume you have an Office Cleaning Company and have some good first page rankings for the search term ‘commercial cleaning services’. This term on Overture UK generated only 38 searches in December 2005, (and assuming Overture UK accounts for approximately 30-40% of UK searches) you could estimate that the total number of people in the UK using ‘commercial cleaning service’ is approx 100.

Therefore, with excellent first page rankings on this search term, at best you might expect 5-10% of these 100 to click-through to your site. So on average, you might get between 5-10 new visitors to your site resulting from this search term – and is this enough to justify an expensive SEO programme? Probably not!

2. Is your site of a high enough standard to convert traffic to enquiries or sales?

Investing thousands of pounds in SEO to drive potential customers to your site is pointless unless this traffic converts to a desired action on your web site. If you website converts 0.4% of visitors to an enquiry, then from 1000 visitors you will get 4 enquiries. Compare this to a quality site that looks good and has been built with conversion systems in mind and converts 5% of visitors – and you’ve got an extra 50 enquiries. As a result the case for SEO varies drastically just by having a quality site geared up to convert its visitors.

The difference between conversion rates of sites on the web are huge and can vary from 0% up to 20%. A good SEO company should have experience of conversion enhancement strategies and should include this as part of their SEO proposal.
Conversion enhancement strategies can include copywriting tactics, advanced conversion reporting, call to action tactics and site usability. If an SEO company can improve your sites conversion rate, as well driving relevant traffic, this is a powerful and winning combination.

3 What positions do you currently have on natural search engine rankings?

This seems pretty obvious but an overlooked point. Before investing in SEO, you should run a detailed positions report showing rankings for ALL phrases relevant to your business (that have high search counts!). This will allow you to benchmark where you are currently, and make decisions on the potential improvement that could be made.

4 What is the average value from resulting enquiries or actual sales generated from your web site?

The sales value of your products/services has a huge impact on the potential returns from an SEO campaign. For example, for an ecommerce site selling vitamins and minerals at an average value of £10-20 per purchase, may have much lower returns from an investment in SEO services compared to an ecommerce site selling washing machines and cookers at an average value of £150-£600.

Both of these ecommerce businesses may be able to justify investment in SEO services, however, the return on investment figures will be very different. Other factors to consider are the relative margins made on the products.

5 How much competition is there for natural rankings on your relevant search phrases?

The level of competition on phrases you wish to drive traffic from is a hugely important factor. For example, compare the level of competition between two phrases in two business sectors, for example, if you run a search on Google for ‘recruitment services’ you will find 77,900,000 sites listed, whereas for ‘financial services’ there are 709,000,000 sites listed. Taking this further, doing a more specific search on ‘financial services nottingham’ brings back 2,610,000 sites.

The relevance of this question to reviewing whether to invest in SEO services, is that the more niche and less competitive the search phrases you are targeting, the quicker you will see results from a managed SEO campaign. For example, if you are a financial services company wanting to target ‘financial services’ then it will take much longer to achieve results from this than for a Recruitment Company wanting to target ‘Recruitment Services’ phrases. As a result, a Financial Services company may need to calculate potential returns from SEO on a much longer term basis, plus the work required is likely to more intensive and expensive when using an SEO agency.

6 How well optimised are web sites in your sector?
While the above is a valid model to use, it is quite simplified. There are other issues to consider with regards to the competition in your sector, in particular is how well optimised the other sites are that you are competing against.

For example, if you look at the natural listings for the search term ‘counselling services’ compared to ‘insurance services’ you will find that the sites on the first two pages are far more well optimised for ‘insurance services’. Also you will find that the sites listed have much better ‘link popularity’ scores and better overall optimisation.
Therefore, irrespective of how many competing sites there are for each search phrase, taking things a level further the quality of the competition in optimisation terms is a far better indicator of how long it may to see results from a managed SEO campaign.

Any diligent SEO agency (like Rossiter & Co!) should consider these factors before starting an SEO campaign on your behalf and will give you an indication of how long it may take to see results.