How Much to Spend on SEO

A lot of business owners have heard of SEO, or search engine optimization, but they may not realize how SEO can grow their businesses and improve their websites. And because SEO is such an important part of successful Internet marketing, our clients often wonder how much they should spend on SEO services. How much to spend on SEO will vary for every business, but it is important that you spend something on SEO, otherwise you may find that it is impossible to keep up with the competition. Investing in Internet marketing and SEO strategies can help your website perform better for your business, resulting in increased sales, conversions and even more customers.

Because SEO is important for every business with an online presence, we will try to help you see why you need SEO for your business. Of course, you’ll want to know how much to spend on SEO, and we can help you determine which services are right for your business.

What is SEO?

SEO stands for search engine optimization, and it is comprised of several actions and techniques that are designed to optimize your websites and content across several platforms for search engines so that you can rank higher on search engine result pages (SERPs).

Why is SEO Important?

SEO is so important for every business because it offers several advantages and ways that you can improve your business. In addition to raising your ranking on SERPs, SEO can raise awareness of your brand, attract new potential consumers, improve the credibility of your business, increase conversions, and drive traffic to your website.

If you’re unsure why you need a high ranking on SERPs, consider this:

• A No. 1 ranking website receives nearly 10 times more clicks than a No. 5 ranking website.
• The top listing in Google’s organic search results gets 33 percent of the traffic.
• The second listing in Google’s organic search results gets 18 percent of the traffic.

By increasing your placement on SERPs, you can get more business for a few reasons. Obviously, more people can see the first website listed in organic results, even with paid-for ads and business listings placed above the organic results. But another, perhaps even more important, reason is that users associate ranking first with being more relevant and more trustworthy.

Google has a unique way of ranking websites, and only sites with quality content that is relevant to the search terms will be listed in the organic results. Users trust that Google will return the best possible websites for each search, so if a site is good enough to be No. 1 with Google, consumers will often trust that site before any others.

Services Provided within SEO

SEO is such a broad set of actions that it’s necessary to separate services to better serve clients. That way business owners can choose which services they need the most. There are several services that we provide at Online Potential that can fall under the SEO umbrella, but we’ll take a look at some of the most beneficial techniques.

Link Building/Backlinking

Link building or backlinking is an SEO strategy that builds a network of links to your website from other websites. This can include links from social media posts, blogs, websites and even landing pages. While established businesses may have no problem getting others to link to their websites, smaller or newer business may need to do their own link building.

Why is link building important? Again, search engines like Google place importance on link building to show that a website is credible and more likely to be relevant for the keywords used in a search query. So you can build your credibility through Google by getting others to link to your website or by creating a backlinking network on your own.

At Online Potential, we recommend using a combined link building method. Of course you want to reach out to those who are likely to link to your website such as bloggers or media coverage of your industry, but don’t forget to ask that your friends and family link to your website via social media. Not only will these methods improve your rankings, but you may see an increase in customers as word of your business spreads. And increased brand awareness is always good for business.

While link building can be done by staff within your business or by professionals at Online Potential, it is a time-consuming strategy. Some Internet marketing companies may entice your business with a promise of a certain amount of links in just a day’s time, but be wary of link building offers that seem too good to be true. Google does penalize websites that appear to be involved in link schemes or businesses that use paid-for links on their sites.

Creative, Quality Content

Content is a big party of SEO because you need quality content in order to rank well with search engines and rate well with your consumers. Texts that are overfilled with keywords and geo-locators can be difficult to read, and consumers can easily spot text that doesn’t provide sufficient information. Even search engines like Google will penalize a website for overusing keywords (or spamming).

Online Potential offers content writing services for websites, business blogs, social media posts, and even online press releases. And for businesses that already employ some great writers, we offer editing services to help polish your content for the web. Remember that content should provide information and be wholly original on every page. Although you may not think twice about including the same paragraph of information on every web page of your site, Google can spot repeated/duplicated copy and may impose penalties for unoriginality. It’s also for the benefit of your business if you provide well-written, thought provoking content so that others are more likely to want to share and repost the information as well as link to it.

What Does SEO Have to Do with Internet Marketing?

SEO is just one technique of Internet marketing, but the two go hand-in-hand. Without SEO, your Internet marketing strategy probably won’t rank well on SERPs, and without a solid Internet marketing strategy, your website won’t be earning to its full potential. While SEO tends to focus on organic search results, Internet marketing picks up the slack of your pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, email marketing, and social media marketing.

Hiring an SEO Company

When you hire an Internet marketing company like Online Potential, you’ll be expected to pay for only the SEO services you request. The price can vary depending on how many keyphrases or keywords you use for optimization, how many pages of your website needs to be optimized, and how many backlinks you need. While we do promise results, SEO is a careful, time-consuming process. Companies that guarantee overnight improvement may be practicing Black Hat SEO techniques, which are not favored by Google or any of the other search engines. Although you may hit the top spot on Google’s SERPs for a day, the consequences and penalties can be dire, doing damage to your company’s reputation that cannot be undone as quickly.

Due to the amount of work that needs to be done for an Internet marketing strategy to be successful, many businesses realize they do not have adequate staffing to devote so much time to their website. For those businesses, hiring an SEO company like Online Potential can save a business valuable time and cost less than a full-time employee.

How Much Will I Spend on SEO?

So, now that you understand how important SEO and Internet marketing can be for your business, you probably want to know how much to spend on the services. You should spend your Internet marketing budget on areas where you website and web presence need improvement. For businesses that already rank well on organic SERPs, spending less on SEO and more on other Internet marketing strategies may be beneficial. For businesses that aren’t even getting on the first page of Google’s result pages, spending more will not only increase visibility of your company, but can also improve sales, which is a solid return on your investment.