What Is The Price of Ranking On Google?
SEO Is Free… Or Is It?
Technically SEO is free and any website owner can execute an SEO campaign themselves without having to allocate a budget to pay for an online marketer. There are plenty of effective online sources and training that provide you the insight to implement the practices on your own in hopes to raise your rankings.
For example, Moz provides a great “Beginners Guide for SEO” for free; they have broken down every component that SEO emcopasses in clear detail for you to easily follow and understand. But once you begin to scratch the surface, you will come to understand that each of these components take continual planning and execution for it to be effective. In short terms – SEO is very time consuming.
The real question that you should be asking yourself is, “how much is my time worth?”.
Time is money, so if trying to teach yourself SEO and other online marketing strategies is taking away from you doing sales or running other aspects of your business, then you are losing more money than what you originally would if you hired an SEO specialist.
SEO Is An Investment, Not An Expense
SEO has become the “It Girl” of the online world and business are willing to pay a pretty penny to have her show up at their party and bring in business. But unlike hiring an “It Girl” to your party and expecting those immediate sales, businesses need to understand that SEO is more of a marathon and not a sprint, and they need to be patient for sales to begin.
It takes time and knowledge to build, and continuous effort to grow. Even when you reach the top of the rankings you still have to stay on top of the industry’s “latest-and-greatest” strategies and keep implementing them to stay there, as there will always be a competitor there waiting for you to slip and take your place.
The goal of doing SEO for your business is to make it to the number one spot in Google’s search result. Why? Because the logical thought is that more people will click on your website and therefore you will generate more leads, and more leads equal more money. This is true, and if done properly, your ROI should pay off your SEO monthly expense and still generate a generous profit.
For example, some of our dental clients have increased their profit by 50% through our internet marketing services but it wasn’t an overnight success. They understood that it would take time for marketing strategies to come into fruition, sometimes even months but they knew that an investment in marketing was necessary for business growth and once it did they reaped the benefits and are now one of the leading competitors within their market.
Different Factors You Must Consider
It takes more than just creating a couple of links here and there and wishing for the best. When trying to create a sustainable SEO campaign, there are different factors that should be considered that will determine how you may rank and how much time you will need to allocate to it.
Some factors include:
- Target Market Competition – some cities are far less competitive than others, meaning that your business may rank quicker and higher in a smaller town than a business within a highly populated downtown city. (i.e. Miami vs Doral)
- Web Design & Usability – is your website designed for conversion? Do you have a cohesive site structure and can your visitors navigate easily through it? Does the landing page respond to their search needs? Are you internally linking to connect related pages?
- Bounce Rate and Time on Page – a high bounce rate can have negative effect on your rankings – the less time visitors spend on your page the more it signals to Google that the information provided isn’t quality.
- Consistent Theme of Your Content – is there consistency throughout your core pages and blog content? Is your website focused on one specific industry or are you trying to cover it all. The more honed in it is, the better, as you will be looked upon as an authority in the field.
All of these factors can take countless man hours a month to test and evaluate in order to get the best results out of your campaign. If you are willing to sit down, either during work hours or after hours to make sure all of your tests produce the best results then more power to you. But if you feel that your strengths lie in running your business and in sales, then stick to what you know and leave the marketing to a trusted company.
Hiring An Internet Marketing Company & Their Pricing Models
There are no shortages of marketing companies, and when making a decision to work with one you should take the time to do your research. Most companies have different pricing models such as:
- Per Per Performance
- Packages (Custom or Standard)
- Hourly-rate
- Keyword-base Pricing
Each have their own pros and cons but you have to go with the route that’s best for you. More importantly look for a company who is just not trying to sell you the highest “package” but guide you through the best course of action that will reap the most benefits for your business.
All of these pricing models can range from a few hundred dollars to thousands, and depending on the competition of your market you should be ready to spend a chunk to raise in the rankings and raise brand awareness.
But remember, no matter the route you choose this is an investment not an expense.