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The
Business Case for SEO
It’s interesting how potential clients have preconceived notions
about which aspects of search engine marketing have the most
value. In fact, they tend to fall into two camps that are 180
degrees apart. The first camp believes completely in the value of
pay-per-click marketing (PPC). It’s easy to understand why. PPC
provides immediate and measurable benefits. The ROI of PPC
marketing is obvious. This group doesn’t understand why it’s
necessary “to bother” doing SEO. The second camp believes the
only way to go is SEO. Clicks are free and the branding benefits
of high rankings have been well documented.
The right answer is that they are both valuable. Each has its
benefits and when you can afford to, you should implement both.
Pay-per-Click
PPC makes sense if you want immediate benefits and like the idea
of paying for performance. SEO provides branding benefits and
longer-term will provide an ROI that is compelling. But unlike
PPC, SEO revenue results aren’t as directly measurable and
manageable.
Pay per click (PPC) gives you the ability to have complete
control over your search traffic. With PPC programs you select
the keywords and write the listings. You control where you’re
listed and what the listing says. You decide what your budget is
and can adjust your spend rate based on results or events (e.g.
announcements, promotions).
By tracking results from a PPC campaign, you can build up a
knowledge base with respect to your business, including which
messages perform the best, which search terms have the best
conversion rates, and what destination URL is best for specific
users to land on. Over time, this knowledge can help you to
improve and define your business.
One of the greatest attractions of PPC is the ability to easily
track clicks and costs allowing you to understand your ROI from
a specific marketing initiative. This gives you confidence to
spend money and drive volume. You may have thought that spending
$5,000 a month on a PPC campaign is way outside your budget, but
once you measure the ROI, you may realize that it’s well worth
the investment.
Search Engine Optimization
So, if PPC is so great why bother with SEO? Basically, because
you will be missing out on a large number of potential clicks.
How large? A number of recent studies have demonstrated that
there are still a lot of users that do not click on the "paid"
listings but rather will search through the regular editorial
search results. The accompanying chart shows that 60% of the
search users prefer (some exclusively) organic over paid
listings.
The only way to get optimized (high) rankings in these
regular editorial results is through an effective SEO program. In most cases, once you have good positioning in the regular
search results, you will continue to receive “free” traffic.
Again, based on data from a number of marketers the increase in
traffic due to SEO averaged 73%. Consider search engine
optimization the same as you would word of mouth advertising or
public relations. It’s exposure that comes with a very high
degree of credibility and trust. Traffic coming from traditional
search listings tends to have high conversion rates.
 
There’s another advantage to traditional search listings. They
are considered unbiased and non-commercial. Traditional search
performs very well at certain points in the buying process. When
consumers are gathering information about a purchase, they show
a marked preference for traditional search listings. When they
are ready to buy online, they seem to have less bias against
paid placement listings and their likelihood to click on one of
these listings increases.
The Dollars and Cents of SEO
Perhaps the most compelling reason not to exclude SEO from your
online marketing strategy comes down to dollars and cents. In an
attempt to quantify the business case for SEO I have gone back
and done some analysis on three recent SEO engagements and the
results they achieved. I chose ecommerce clients that we had
optimized and reviewed their average sales before and after SEO
was implemented. In two of the situations the only change made
was the optimization of the site. In another the optimization
occurred at the same time we implemented a PPC campaign. In the
first two cases the store sales rose 64% and 75% after the SEO
was implemented. In the third case the store revenue actually
went up a staggering 169%, but if you back out the sales that
were a result of the PPC campaign, the store revenue that could
be attributed to SEO improved by 49%. In other words, the
average improvement in store revenue that was apparently due to
SEO was 62%.
Can we be sure that all of this was a result of SEO? No. There
could have been product, seasonal and other effects that
contributed. But I think it's safe to say that there was a
significant increase that resulted directly from the SEO. The
bottom line: search optimization has a real and measurable
impact on traffic, conversions and revenue (or lead generation)
improvement. Given that these clicks begin to approach “free”
after amortizing the cost of SEO over time, the ROI for SEO is
compelling. Added to the branding benefits no marketer or
business owner should doubt the value of search engine
optimization.
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