Optimize
Optimize My Firm

Search engine optimization (SEO) is an essential element of a well-rounded marketing strategy. Most businesses usually invest at least 10% of their annual marketing budget into this strategy because of its potential to drive growth long-term. However, most businesses have, at best, a cursory understanding of how SEO works. Additionally, there are several expensive and frustrating misconceptions regarding SEO that need to be dispelled for business owners to obtain a solid ROI for their efforts.

Misconception: SEO is just putting the right keywords on your website

Fact: Despite SEO being 29% of marketers' top trend they utilize, many companies don't understand how it works. To understand SEO, you must first understand Google's mission - not their algorithm, but their mission. It is quite simple: Google wants to connect their users with the most relevant, reliable, and correct answers to their queries. If Google can do that, then users keep coming back, clicking their ads, and Google generates revenue.

With the mission in mind, a business's website needs to have content in place that answers the questions that relevant users are asking. If a Google user is looking for a lawyer after a car accident, the law firm's website better have enough content on their website to answer the questions that the user is asking. And the content needs to be accurate.

Additionally, the website needs to have credibility and be technically sound. There is a lot of technical expertise that goes into SEO, which is why most businesses opt to work with an SEO agency.

Misconception: All businesses need to use SEO to be successful

Fact: SEO simply isn't for everyone. Depending on a business's budget, size, geographic market competition, and other considerations, SEO simply doesn't work for every business.

Any business considering SEO needs to have realistic expectations from the start. If they are a start-up company in a large market with dozens of established competitors, they will need an aggressive marketing budget in order to run a successful SEO campaign.

Lindsey Busfield, one of the leading SEO experts in the legal marketing industry relates, "If you look at SEO like real estate, the closer you get to the big cities, the more expensive it is going to be to rank. This is because you will need so much more content and domain authority to move the needle with Google. So, to be successful in your industry using SEO, you will either have to adjust your budget to meet the market or move your business location to somewhere less competitive."

While SEO can yield a great ROI for some businesses, for others it is wiser to invest in other types of marketing campaigns.

Misconception: SEO as an add-on service

Fact: There are several marketing agencies that offer SEO as an add-on service for a few hundred bucks. However, many of these agencies can't deliver meaningful results. They might add a business to a directory or throw some keywords into the metadata, but none of this is actually going to move the needle in terms of search results, especially in saturated markets.

For most businesses to run successful SEO campaigns, they need to work with SEO agencies that specialize in this form of marketing. This is especially true in niche industries, like legal or medical, where Google has special regulations pertaining to how they rank these websites on the search results page. For these highly regulated industries, working with an SEO agency that specializes in a particular niche can yield better results than a generic marketing firm.

Misconception: SEO will work immediately

Fact: SEO takes time. Sometimes, SEO takes a long time. Depending on the sector, market, and business's budget, SEO can take six months to a year - or more - to yield results. This is an additional hurdle for smaller businesses to invest in because almost 80% of agencies only work on a monthly retainer.

However, businesses that can afford to invest in SEO long-term can see exceptional returns on their investment.

Busfield notes, "For many of the law firms that we work with, a typical case is worth roughly $2,000 to them. Clearly, some cases are worth much, much more. If they are investing $10,000 per month in SEO and they get 10 new cases per month, then they are seeing an incredible return."

https://ahrefs.com/blog/seo-pricing/