ARE SEO SERVICES WORTH IT IN 2022?

The Key Benefits & Limitations of SEO 2022

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In 2022, Are SEO Services Worth It?

You may be considering search engine optimisation (SEO) for the first time as you read this as a practical investment for your business. SEO is both an art and a science and is a potent digital marketing strategy of mass attraction. Today we are going to cut right through the noise and confront if SEO is a worthwhile and financially sound investment for your business. Are SEO services worth it?

What Is SEO Exactly?

Search engine optimisation, (SEO) is a digital marketing strategy that directly increases your visibility in the search engine results pages (SERP’s) of search engines such as Google. Search Engine Land states that SEO is, “the process of improving your site to increase its visibility when people search for products and services related to your business”, this SEO definition does a great job of outlining why SEO is of interest to businesses. There are also various SEO tactics that all play a role in an overall SEO campaign or custom SEO strategy.

We like to break SEO into 3 distinct categories, on-page SEO, off-page SEO and local SEO. On-page SEO is all activity that takes place on your website that improves your rankings in the search engine results pages (SERP’s). Off-page SEO is all activity away from your website, such as social media for example that increase your websites rankings in the SERP’s and finally local SEO is a mixture of on-page SEO and off-page SEO but in a localised context, an example of this would be optimising your Google my business profile (GMB) to increase local traffic (off-page SEO) or creating location specific landing pages on your website (on-page SEO).

What Are The Key Benefits of SEO?

To determine if SEO is a worthwhile investment, it is important to understand the key benefits that SEO can offer. We have broken-down the 7 core advantages of SEO in a past post that looks at these key advantages in full detail. Here is a more extensive list of the benefits that SEO can offer as a digital marketing investment.

Increases sales for your business.
Increases organic traffic to your website.
Increases local authority.
Increases rankings in the SERP’s.
Acquires new clients & customers.
Accelerates national expansion.
Builds brand equity.
Optimises entire marketing strategy.
Provides strategic direction.
Prevents traffic obstruction & penalties.
Accelerates business growth.
Minimises opportunity cost of not investing in SEO.
SEO is relatively low risk.
Increases quality of leads.
Creates competitive advantage.
Return on investment (ROI).

Who Can Benefit From SEO?

SEO is not limited to any specific industry and can be incredibly powerful for any business looking to improve their online presence and digital marketing. However, there are specific business types with certain characteristics that should really consider investing into SEO simply because the high opportunity cost involved with lack of visibility online. We have recently covered what industries need SEO the most 2022, which highlights these specific industries. Here is a list of the key industries that can significantly benefit from SEO.

Professional services (Solicitors, architects, accountants, financial services, engineers & IT consultants).
Medical Industry (Dentists, chiropractors, physicians, doctors, healthcare providers, cosmetic surgeries & medical equipment specialists).
Real estate, (Estate agents, removals & renovations).
Food, (Restaurants, café’s & takeaways).
Online businesses & E-Commerce.

It is important to stress that SEO investment is not limited to these specific businesses and industries, it is just evident that certain industries can really squeeze the value out of every penny they invest into SEO right now as we head into 2022.

Are SEO services worth it for everybody and anybody? Well SEO is only beneficial for businesses that can gain from more exposure online. We can see a clear trend towards digital in many industries and this is on a global level.

For instance, the retail industry is moving towards digital, we can see that e-commerce was responsible for 18% of total retail sales globally in 2020, this was at just 13.6% in 2019. We are now forecasted to see e-commerce with 21.8% of the total retail sales globally by 2024.

With this change in the market, traditional brick-and-mortar stores are now engaging with e-commerce to capitalise on the changes in consumer behaviour and we are seeing the demand for SEO services increase across the board in industries affected in a similar manner. Is there a trend towards digital in your industry?

What Are The Limitations Of SEO?

Alongside the many benefits of SEO there are also limitations like all marketing methods. Here are the core limitations that you need to consider when considering are SEO services worth it.

SEO can be costly.
SEO requires patience.
SEO is difficult to do right.
SEO won’t fix a broken product or service.
SEO is competitive.

SEO Can Be Costly

For small businesses and start-ups with limited cashflow SEO can be a difficult investment decision. You can look at our blog post on, how much does SEO cost UK. We explored the average costs for small businesses investing into SEO and the satisfaction rates from SEO investment at different levels of investment.

One key SEO study revealed that business owners that invested more than £365 per month were 53.3% more likely to be “extremely satisfied” with their SEO investment. The message here is that you can invest too little into SEO and not see the impact you may expect. With SEO you get what you pay for and budget SEO can often be a red flag to avoid, as results are very limited when operating with an SEO budget under this £365 threshold.

However, at Concourse Marketing we offer an SEO starter package for a one-off payment of £299 that can kickstart your SEO campaign for business owners new to SEO. This SEO package is to introduce new business owners to SEO and give you a taste of what is involved with an SEO campaign.

Looking to start?

Start here, we offer a one-off SEO starter package!

SEO STARTER PACKAGE

SEO Requires Patience

It is no secret that SEO takes time, the way SEO works is by compounding over months it is a long-term investment that requires patience. It isn’t instant such as other methods like PPC (pay per click), where you pay Google to give you rankings as a service. However, the aim of SEO is to increase organic traffic and not pay for the traffic directly. An interesting SEO statistic is the fact SEO drives almost 100% more traffic than PPC, also a SEO survey revealed that over 77% of people recognise paid search ads which shows they are compromised in terms of discretion, and therefore may be avoided by users which is an argument for organic rankings and SEO over PPC.

SEO Is Difficult To Do Right

From a DIY perspective SEO is a discipline that takes time to learn and is a very nuanced practice. This is also to be considered when hiring an SEO company, not all SEO companies and SEO consultants are created equal, you must find a results-driven SEO expert that can capitalise on the opportunities surrounding your business effectively. We have a blog post on what to ask SEO consultants, that can help you screen out the SEO experts from the SEO amateurs.

There are many working parts to a successful SEO campaign here is a list of just some of individual components involved with a successful SEO campaign, some of these components can be priced as individual services by SEO specialists. It is because the nuanced nature of SEO and these different components that make the execution of a custom SEO strategy difficult.

Link building.
Keyword research.
Content marketing.
Videography.
Graphic design.
Copywriting.
Social media management.
Local SEO.
Website speed optimisation.
Technical SEO.
SEO auditing.
Digital PR.
CTR (click through rate) optimisation.
Alt text, meta data & schema mark-up.
Redirections & XML sitemaps.

SEO Wont Fix A Broken Product Or Service

The success of an SEO campaign is very much dependent on how demanded your product or service is right now in the marketplace. This limitation can be found across all marketing methods. The good old saying that has stood the test of time “you can’t polish a turd”, fits perfectly when exploring this limitation.

The way SEO works is by identifying what is demanded in the search engines in terms of keywords which are search terms that prospects manually input into their search engines when looking for your product or service. If your product or service has very little to no demand, then just because you invest in SEO doesn’t mean orders will flood in via your website and your phone if going to ring. The success of your SEO campaign correlates with the potential your product or service has in the marketplace and how you position yourself in the marketplace in terms of brand identity and differentiation.

Conclusion - Are SEO Services Worth It For You?

We have looked at what SEO is exactly, the key benefits of SEO, the limitations of SEO and who specifically SEO will benefit the most. With all of this in mind are SEO services worth it for you?

SEO investment will always come down to the objectives and goals you have for the growth of your business. This is also the case when deciding on a suitable SEO budget for your SEO campaign, your initial investment will be based on your urgency for digital improvement. Here are few questions you can ask yourself to clarify are SEO services worth it.

How dependent is your business on website enquiries?
How many leads would you like to acquire directly from your website?
Would you like to drive appointments and consultations directly via your website?
What is the primary reason your considering digital marketing investments right now?
What is the current level of success you are getting from digital marketing?
How important is to for you to compete digitally in your market?

These questions are just for you to reflect on, there may be other questions that come to mind when considering are SEO services worth it for you. If your still unsure if SEO services are worth it for you specifically, we offer a free SEO consultation where you can ask any further questions you may have, please don’t hesitate to reach out there is no obligation we just love to chat about SEO.

To conclude when considering any investment for your business it needs to make 100% fiscal sense. The bottom line of all financial investments and question to ask is will you get a penny back for every penny invested or ideally a pound back for every penny invested, right?

SEO is known to yield huge returns for businesses that implement effective SEO campaigns, and the truth is you wont know if SEO could work for you until you give it a try.

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