Is SEO Right for Your Business?
Like many of you, I remember the days before Search Engine Optimization became something that companies spent advertising dollars on.
Businesses spent their money on top website designers who had the flexibility to focus on design and functionality without all the nuances for making them visible.
Maybe those were simpler times. But maybe the challenge of attracting more eyeballs, generating more leads and making more sales has forced marketers to keep SEO within the marketing plan.
One thing is clear, in a short amount of time search engine optimization has transformed the way online and offline business is done.
Not only individuals and small businesses, even top corporations are looking to create more traffic, visibility and maximize their revenue.
The trend has been increasing and the seo industry within itself is evolving rapidly.
But whatever the scenario is let me explain you
Why is SEO a must for you?
Search engine optimization improves and nurtures a website’s visibility or ranking in organic search engine ranking pages and drives maximum traffic to the website to increase its visibility, sales leads, traffic and more.
So deploying search engine optimization, you can make the most out of the business you deal in and carry out. Your target end users are around the corner when you have the technique implemented.
Thus the technique is a fuel for the business to develop it faster and deliver maximum returns from investment made.
But another bigger question that arises is whether
SEO is right fit for your business or not…
Why am I even asking this question?
This comes from my experience of dealing with many businesses in all these years. As we know all humans are not alike similarly all the businesses are not alike and they are run by different individuals in different industries.
In the process of dealing with clients I have come across many questions and scenarios. I thought I should share my observations which can be useful for you while devising a marketing plan for your business.
While SEO is largely suited for many businesses depending on their goals and objectives, still SEO is not right for
1. Faint hearted or impatient person
SEO which is a part of organic optimization is very volatile. Because there are two players here one is search engine and another is business who try to rank higher for their business terms.
There is a third player who always wants to outrank genuine business by employing any quick trick. These people are spammers. Hence, to protect the quality and to serve accurate results to the users search engines frequently tweak their algorithm.
If you play fair and by rules it is going to be fine. If you are caught doing any shady hack or something suspicious then of course you will be dislodged and penalized from SERP. This can be troublesome.
In addition, the organic optimization takes time for the result to be visible. Hence, businesses looking for quicker results should not go for this marketing channel.
2. Business with less budget
Since SEO is a part of organic optimization and its nature of being slow, it takes some time for the result to show up.
Depending upon your industry and keywords along with their competition and other factors, it can take more than a year for your main business terms to rank.
Hence, to make this happen a substantial amount has to be spent in carrying out day to day activities. Then there are other costs like consultants cost, web hosting cost, content creation costs, outreach costs, etc.
The investment is ongoing in a month on month basis. So you should have a deep pocket before you see revenue pouring in.
3. Business with short timeframe
As you know, all businesses are not the same. Similarly their objectives are not the same. Even in the same business two products are different and tend to suit two different target audiences.
SEO can be appropriate and viable for their long term objective. But for few product launches, announcements, etc SEO does not become a viable marketing channel.
Because of the timebound thing you have to look for other avenues and marketing channels to make your product or services a success.
4. Little to no competition
Competition is a sign of demand. This has direct correlation with your market’s availability and audience looking for your products and services.
At the same time it has become trickier as google keeps changing its algorithm and keeps pushing the organic result below.
Hence, the keywords research part becomes more trickier. In many cases you have to manually look at the SERPs for the selected keywords.
5. You serve only local market
You have to factor in money spent on marketing activities and ROI realized against the marketing spend to actually calculate the profit.
So before jumping in the marketing with all guns blazing you should understand the nature of your business. If you are serving the local market only then there is no point going for full fledged SEO optimization.
Google has come up with many other alternatives like Google My Business, etc if you play locally. There are many businesses like laundry services, local fast foods, eateries, restaurants, etc who only serve the local and limited market.
6. Very less search universe
Search universe is very crucial for the overall success of the campaign. Because if the business does not have a decent search universe then it becomes very difficult to justify the marketing budget and show substantial results to the client for a bigger success story.
Recently, I was optimizing a client’s website. The industry they were in was niche but with the high ticket item. Even one sale would have brought millions of dollars in revenue.
The industry was the ‘Shipping Management Software’ industry. I managed to rank them for their core business/product term at google first page first result. But the global search was only 1300.
So at the meetings we would always discuss to find more lucrative keywords for their business which kind of become grunt work for the entire team.
7. Brand new businesses
We have already entered the era of startups. Technology has revolutionized the world. New and never heard products and services are being invented.
These are really new concepts and they did not exist even a month back. Now the problem is if the product and services are solving the problem and making lives easier then definitely the search is being propelled.
Soon you see a search universe is being discovered. We can take a look at services like Uber and Netflix. They are unicorns in their respective industries.
But the problem is faced when the business fails to address the larger issues. Hence, discovering the search universe becomes a big challenge.
8. Multiple countries and languages
Although, this is doable. It becomes trickier to understand the geography properly and target the market smartly.
Being in different geography the product features have to be different. Lots of other considerations will be required to make the campaign success.
Similarly, targeting languages becomes trickier where a lot of regional languages are being spoken. Hence, a proper and appropriate vernacular strategy should be adopted and employed. Which will make the campaign expensive.
Hence, before venturing out, you should do a comprehensive market and business analysis before jumping in.
Having said that, I do not mean to discourage you. But all the points have to be considered before starting the campaign. Once you start without much research and you do not see the result down the line then obviously you will get discouraged and will abandon the activity. This will incur more loss in terms of time and money.
All in all the time has come for the integrated digital marketing campaigns. Hence, a synergy should exist between all the different marketing channels to realize branding, visibility and revenues for the larger success of business.
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