You may be questioning why we’re asking given we’re a company who deliver search engine optimisation services to small businesses. Well, let’s first say that we’re not trying to stop you using SEO, it’s more of a wake-up call for business owners.

There was a time when SEO was just about including a few keywords in your title and meta description and then advertising on a few web directories in order to get backlinks (and if you’re not even doing that then you’ve a long way to go).

These days SEO includes:

• Social Media (Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, YouTube etc.)
• Analytics
• SEO Tools
• Content marketing
• Open Graph
• Local Search
• Micro data and schema
• Data scraping

The list goes on, and the landscape is constantly shifting so you have to keep up with the changes. If you’re running a successful business (or hoping to) do you have time for modern search engine optimisation demands? The answer is probably not so you need to out-source to the experts.

Let’s say you’re starting out. If you’ve only a small operating budget can you afford to spend big when in your first year of trading? In reality you’re going to be trying to just survive until the next year.

Start-ups dream of immediately outranking other websites who have spent tens of thousands in digital marketing. Imagine trying to compete with an established business who’ve already spent out on three years worth of SEO at £50,000 per year. That’s £150k and you’re trying to displace them from the top with a budget of £5k. It’s not going to happen.

At the early stages you need to make every penny count by ensuring you maximise every possible conversion from each visitor to your website. This means focusing your site toward conversions. SEO won’t do that for you at the beginning. SEO is a long-term commitment that can take months (if not a year or more) to start seeing a return on investment (ROI).

PPC Campaigns

So what’s the solution? Well, consider running PPC campaigns instead. It can lead to quick results but managed badly it can also lead to expensive failures. Either way, you’ll be better placed to know your position in the market and how to go about improving your bottom line.

If you can get a return from PPC then SEO will start to pay dividends in the long term. Use PPC as a test-bed and if you pass then you’ll be better placed for running SEO. If it goes wrong, you can examine the efficiency of your landing pages, offers and products. Once the foundations for your revenue stream are in place then SEO can start to reduce cost per acquisition and increase your profits.