This is one of the most common questions that we get asked. Most business owners have a hard time understanding the dynamic nature of the Internet and they think that ‘website development’ and ‘showing up in search results’ go hand-in-hand. While these two activities are related, there are big differences between building a website and making it visible to Internet users.
A San Diego website designer, and friend of ours, came up with a good analogy for the relationship between website design and SEO:
The same concept applies with website design and search engine optimization (SEO). You can hire the best website designer on the planet, but if you don’t do some form of SEO (or search engine marketing) then your site will remain in the middle of nowhere.
SEM is the practice of leveraging the major search engines for website promotion. You can think of search engine marketing as having two major facets: organic search results and paid search results. Best Rank utilizes both the organic and paid results to generate relevant traffic for our clients - you can learn more about our SEM Services here.
SEO is used to make a website appear more visible in organic search engine results - organic listings traditionally appearing on the left side of search results pages and receive roughly 70-80% of all clicks. The remainder of clicks go to the paid results (PPC, will be discussed later on).
Being more visible in the search results allows your customers to find your business when they type in your targeted keywords.
Generally speaking , there are two parts to SEO: (1) On-site factors and (2) Off-site factors.
PPC listings appear on the right side (and sometimes directly above) the organic listings. The engines will charge $$ everytime an ad is clicked, is a great way to send instant traffic to a website. However, once an ad budget dries up so do the ads - which is why organic SEO can become a very attractive option.
You have to think of SEO as a subset of traditional marketing. You might undertake a single activity to market your product or service or you might embark on an entire campaign lasting months or years to push your offering - for most businesses it can be time consuming but the rewards of solid SEO efforts can last a long time after they're completed, which is why ROI can be very high.
Depending on your needs and like traditional marketing, search engine optimization can encompass optimizing the technical components of just a few web pages or it can emcompass technically optimizing all pages and or marketing the site in question month after month using viral, social media efforts.
Most businesses that have never undertaken SEO will likely require a mix of both on-site technical optimization and several months of off-site promotion to start seeing results.
Let’s take a step back for a minute. Did you know statistically about 90% of organic clicks happen on results 1 through 10? This means most searchers don’t look past the first page of search results when they enter a search query. If they don’t find what they are looking for on the first page, then most people revise the search query and search again.
If your business is not found somewhere on the top page, then you are essentially invisible.
First page results = $$ Big Rewards $$As you can imagine, being on the first page of search results can mean a significant increase in business/money to you, especially if you're being found for competitive, converting keyword terms.
Keep in mind, ranking number one for a keyword can be great, however a more realistic and desirable goal is to rank well for a wide net of keywords. Research has shown that most websites receive the majority of their keyword traffic from many different keywords vs just a single term. We generally bake this wide net strategy right into our SEO campaigns, specifically through content generation.
Most businesses that we work with require a comprehensive SEO campaign to see results. Through consistent, methodical efforts and a little patience just about any website can see an increase in the quantity and quality of traffic.
Best Rank has developed a standard methodology, built from industry best practices, that we run all our clients through - the magic is in the execution and that's where we excel.
If you're going to hire someone to marketing your website, you can forget about spending a couple of hundred dollars over the course of a month or two and hope to be on the first page of Google. Depending upon how competitive the industry is and how competitive your keywords are has a direct correlation to the amount of money you will have to spend to see good results.
Generally speaking, you will find companies who will perform SEO services for as little as $500 per month for a small website and a couple of main keywords. If you are a large company with hundreds of keywords, then you could be looking at $10,000+ per month. Fortune 500 companies spend millions every year on their SEO campaigns.
Cost is relative! What you should be concerned about with SEO/SEM (as with any marketing effort) is your return on investment (ROI). It may take a few months to get your keyword rankings to improve, but if afterwards you are seeing hundreds of percent ROI, then the cost is negligible.
There are a lot of fly-by-night SEM/SEO companies who will promise you first page results…DO NOT BELIEVE THEM!!
First page results sound nice except that no one outside the search engines control search engine rankings and for this reason ranking guarantees are worthless. Some SEO companies (even some large ones) might get you to the first page for something non-competitive like “underwater basket weaving in a deep pool”…but who’s searching for that?
If someone guarantees you first page results:
If Google, for example, decides to change the way it ranks sites, then we can’t do anything about it. However, a good searh marketing company will stay on top of these changes and update your site accordingly.
When you are thinking about getting a site designed/developed you should at least be aware of the fact that:
You can learn more about us and our services, or just contact us today.
