How to make search engine optimization a strategic business investment

A website is the heart of a business’s online presence and with over 70% of consumers researching businesses online before buying or visiting, you need an excellent one. But getting a website found requires a well-thought-out digital marketing strategy – and one way is to rank high in search results for searches related to your business search engine optimization.

This is where  (SEO) plays an important role. SEO is the process of optimizing a website so that it appears higher on the search results pages. The right SEO investment increases your position in the results, which directly affects how many people click through to your website.

For example, about 67% of clicks go to the first five results in Google. If you want searchers to see and visit your website, you should invest in SEO.

Wondering where to start with your SEO investment? You’ve come to the right place! In this post we explore:

• Does your business need to invest in SEO?
• How to invest in SEO
• The return on an SEO investment

Does your business need to invest in seo?

You probably know how important your website is to helping customers find you, and you may even understand the value of a prime position in search engine results.

But without a strategic plan to increase your search engine ranking, the chances of appearing high on Google are almost non-existent, but seo will help you change that.

SEO is an invaluable marketing strategy for any business and brings benefits such as:

• Appears where searchers are looking for information
• Satisfy your target audience with useful and relevant answers to search queries
• Get more customers to your website
• Generate long-term results
• Synergies with other channels such as PPC and Content Marketing

If your business does not already have an SEO strategy in place, now is the time to consider it. Any business looking to reach customers online will benefit from investing in this basic strategy.

But when planning your budget, remember that SEO is an ongoing process and involves many areas of expertise. To see meaningful results from your investment, you need the right team, or you can partner with an SEO company . You also have to be willing to wait a few months to see your results .

While the initial wait may be long, your investment will continue to drive traffic and results for years to come.

How to invest in SEO

What if you’re thinking about investing in seo but don’t know where to start? Any business looking to add SEO to their marketing strategy should follow these steps:

1. Establish and analyze existing marketing objectives

SEO should have a strategic role in a larger digital marketing strategy. Before establishing your seo plan or determining the best investment method, you need to review your overall marketing goals .

Is it to increase traffic?  Build brand awareness ? Increase sales or generate more leads ?

How aggressive an SEO plan do you need? Will you invest in traditional or local SEO?

2. Do a competitive analysis

Another component that affects your SEO investment is your competitors and how they perform in the search results.

In this step, you look at search volume and keywords that your competitors are ranking for. Understanding the state of your industry will help you evaluate the potential return on investment (ROI).

You also see if the target audience is searching for more informational or transactional keywords or an even mix of the two. Both types of searches are helpful to your marketing strategy, but understanding this mix in advance will guide the direction of your SEO investment.

3. Evaluate your current SEO situation

When you understand the SEO situation in your industry, it’s time to evaluate your own website . Use an SEO tool like Google Search Console or Ahrefs to determine how much work is required and how well you rank in search results.

Even if you rank high, you will likely still find areas for improvement. However, knowing how to improve is challenging due to the many factors involved in seo. To highlight areas where the website can be improved, you can do an SEO test here .

4. Determine the SEO plan

Once you know your site’s SEO strengths and areas for improvement, decide which changes you think will have the biggest impact. While the most strategic improvements vary for each company, there are some basic elements to prioritize:

• Optimize page speed
• Link building
• Improve website structure
• Optimize existing content for SEO
• Create new SEO content

Some websites may need a comprehensive seo strategy such as on-page , off-page and technical SEO improvements . Others may choose to focus on one or two areas.

5. Evaluate available SEO resources

Now that you know which SEO areas you need to prioritize, it’s good to take a look at your internal resources. To implement a thorough SEO strategy, you need experts in areas such as:

• Web design and development

• Content strategy
• Copywriting and content creation
• Analysis of data

If you do not have the internal knowledge needed to implement your SEO strategy, you must decide whether you want to invest in hiring new staff or partner with an SEO agency .

Both have their advantages but if you don’t have the time or resources to recruit, train and manage an SEO team, an SEO company is a good solution.

6. Have realistic expectations

Before you go all in and invest in seo, make sure you and the company have realistic expectations. SEO has a significant return but you need to optimize your website continuously and wait to see results.

Whether you choose to hire an agency or learn to do it in-house, remember that SEO is not a tactic that you do for a couple of months and then move on to something else.

The long-term nature means that you must continuously work with your SEO company or dedicate a team member – or several – to the optimization.

7. Measure and analyze results

Another critical aspect of having realistic expectations is knowing how you attribute actual results to SEO. If you invest in this strategy, you need a way to accurately measure your results .

Depending on your SEO goals, you can track:

• Keyword ranking
• Organic visibility
• Organic Click Through Rate (CTR)
• Rejection rate
• Organic traffic
• Conversions

Using analytics tools like Google Analytics to track these metrics will help you evaluate your SEO and attribute it to the bottom line.

ROI of an search engine optimization investment

Now that we’re talking about tracking the return on your SEO investment, what kind of SEO return should you expect?

Like most aspects of SEO, it depends. Your return may vary from another company’s based on factors such as:

• The existing search engine optimization situation
• The amount you chose to invest
• The SEO competition
• The aggressiveness of your plan
• With more

But when you invest strategically, SEO will generate significant results over time for your business. To show the potential, let’s say you run an e-commerce website.

Before investing in SEO, you see an average of 5000 organic sessions each month, with a conversion rate of 5%.

Your SEO investments help you land higher in the search results, so your monthly organic sessions increase by 50% to 10,000.

Wondering if a 50% increase is realistic? Check out our cases ! Our search engine optimization services have driven well over a 50% increase for many clients.

And this scenario doesn’t take into account how SEO contributes to a higher conversion rate as well, we’ll cover that in another post.