 The
Real Cost Of SEO: It's Not Budget, It's Believers!
The
Real Cost Of SEO: It's Not Budget, It's Believers!
by Gord Hotchkiss, Thursday, January 26, 2006
NOT TOO
LONG AGO, I was moderating a panel of search marketing experts who
were comparing the merits of sponsored search and organic search
Optimisation. We were unanimous in our support of organic Optimisation;
none of us could think of an individual case where the cost- effectiveness
of organic didn't far exceed every other marketing channel our clients
had tried. From the audience came the question, "If organic
Optimisation is so effective, why isn't it a more common strategy?"
Great question. Unfortunately, the answer isn't an easy one.
Requirement One: Corporate Understanding
The problem with organic Optimisation is that it can't be owned
by any one department in a larger organization. While a sponsored
campaign can be launched by a single department--or by an individual,
for that matter--with no impact on any other department, organic
Optimisation needs buy-in throughout an organization. This is why
we generally see the best Optimisation on sites where C-level executives
are close to the front lines, believers in Optimisation, and can
give a single go-ahead that will open the required doors for organic
Optimisation to happen. The bigger the organization, the more unlikely
it is that this will happen.
Usually, the need for organic Optimisation is recognized by someone
in the marketing department. Here's the typical scenario: marketing
has been convinced to try sponsored search. They're generally happy
with the results, but then they read an article or attend a conference
where someone (and I happen to be a prime culprit) tells them that
70 percent of the clicks actually happen in the organic results.
"Wait a minute," they say. "I'm spending $4.28 a
click and I could get more traffic with a free listing?" They
immediately run to the nearest computer and see how they rank for
the terms they're currently buying. Nothing on the first page, or
the second, or the third. Ah, there they are! Number 48 for their
term--stuck in no-man's land.
Requirement Two: A Friendly IT Department
In the next step, the marketing guy usually visits the IT department,
which has technical ownership of the company Web site, and begins
with the question, "How come we don't rank on the search engines?
What's wrong with our site?"
You want to create a sworn IT enemy for life? This is the way to
do it. And if this doesn't work, follow up with the comment, "If
you guys can't do it, we'll have to find someone who can."
This is generally where my company comes in, right in the middle
of a vicious turf war between marketing and IT.
Requirement Three: No Sacred Cows
Now, the SEO experts (that would be us) start saying that the Flash
on the front page has to go. Suddenly, marketing is not so sure.
"We love that Flash, and it cost us a lot of money!"
It gets worse. The entire navigation structure of the site has to
change, we need a lot more content, we're going to want to create
separate topic areas for our main offerings, we have to reconfigure
our CMS, and we have to strip out all the Javascript we have on
every page and reference it as an external .js file. Suddenly, marketing
is second-guessing us, IT is up in arms, legal is having a fit because
none of the additional content required has been vetted, and the
C-level executives are wondering what the hell hit them.
Requirement Four: Champions with Perseverance
and Thick Skins
At this point, our marketing champion, who got the whole ball rolling,
is on everybody's most- wanted list, and not in a good way. Everybody's
thinking, "You know, on second thought, maybe it would just
be easier to stick to our sponsored search campaign."
There is a cost to doing SEO. It's not the budget required, which
is minimal relative to other marketing initiatives. It's the time
and patience required on the part of one person to get the buy-in
that's needed to make SEO happen. That's a price that many companies
have been unwilling to pay up to now.
The Payoff
Let me give you some reasons why it's worth it:
• What's good for a search engine is good for humans. The
changes that make your site easier to index are almost always changes
your visitors will appreciate as well. More content, less unnecessary
Flash, standard navigation options and cleaner code will bring you
in line with long-standing usability guidelines.
• Organic traffic is not dependent on budget. This traffic
base goes on, day after day, whether you're topping up your AdWords
account or not.
• Organic Optimisation gets less painful as time goes on.
Once you make the commitment, the painful part can be over relatively
soon, but you'll be reaping the benefits for years to come.
• You'll reach a whole new market segment. People tend to
look at organic listings when they're in the research phase, higher
in the buying funnel. This gives you the chance to intercept consumers
earlier and build a relationship that can last a long time.
Ode to an Ex-Client
I'd like to close off with a painful real-world example to prove
my point. We had the CEO of a company bring us on to help with organic
Optimisation. But rather than pave the way for success, he threw
us to the lions and quickly exited the scene. We identified the
issues keeping the company from higher visibility on the search
engines, outlined our recommendations, and handed them over to the
IT team for implementation.
And there our suggestions sat, and sat, and sat. Meanwhile, the
IT team pursued its own agenda, spinning its wheels on minutiae
while ignoring the fundamental issues that had already been identified.
Our frustration level rose, as did the CEO's, who was wondering
why there was no improvement. Guess who the internal IT team pointed
the finger at? Eventually, we parted ways with the client. We couldn't
win, and the client was getting no value from recommendations that
no one would follow.
Wee usually monitor activity for a period of time following the
termination of a contract. Eventually, this client did get around
to doing one or two of the things we recommended. These were relatively
easy fixes, but the results were dramatic: a 448 percent increase
in visibility in the organic listings. Of course, at this point,
no one remembers who made the original recommendation. All they'll
remember is that they only saw improvement after they got rid of
their SEO company.
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