An SEO Campaign is Not in Your Best Interest

09/25/2009

By John McCarthy, WebMetro Director of Search Engine Optimization

Although I am a big believer in the value of SEO, sometimes an SEO campaign is not in a client’s best interest – at least initially.

During a recent conversation with the president of a B2B technology company, I asked why he was considering implementing an SEO campaign. Like many businesses I speak to today, he acknowledged the economic slowdown caused a drop in leads for his sales team. Wanting to develop new lead streams, he reached out to several of his peers at competing companies about their lead development efforts.

A few of his competitors acknowledged they were largely getting leads and customers from organic search. They had invested in SEO as a customer acquisition strategy a year earlier and were now reaping the rewards of the investment. Believing he was missing the boat on leads and sales, the president of the technology company set aside a budget and contacted WebMetro to implement an SEO campaign.

When Exactly Do You Need That?

After learning this information about the slowdown in leads and what his competitors were implementing – I asked the president a very important question, “Do you need to make the phone ring tomorrow?”

The president replied, “What do you mean?”

I asked again but this time with some clarification, “Do you need to make the telephone ring tomorrow or 6-9 months from now?”

After a moment of silence, he responded, “Well my sales team has enough leads in their pipeline for the next 3-4 weeks. After that, I don’t know. Why?”

Some ‘Splainin’ to Do

I explained that an average new SEO campaign often takes 6-9 months for initial rankings to develop and often longer for campaigns in highly competitive markets. The search engine optimization process is fairly involved and generally requires a client to modify its website, add content to support relevancy needs, and allow time to properly develop link popularity.

In the case of this technology company, it would take longer than average since the website had very little content compared to its peers. For most clients, content development is labor-intensive and takes considerable time to write, approve and add to a website.

Now What Are We Supposed to Do?

After listening to my explanation the president then responded, “If SEO is not the answer, what should I do?”

I explained that after considering his budget and the need to immediately start filling a sales pipeline, the best customer acquisition strategy for the company is paid search. With paid search we can literally make the phone ring within a few weeks to dovetail into his existing sales pipeline.

While the paid search campaign is running, we can build the proper foundation for an SEO campaign. We can start by implementing site-wide best practices in terms of site architecture and page construction. We can research the content needs and then build a schedule to deliver and implement quality content over time. With time on our side, we can re-engineer the site to make it search engine ready within a few short months.

Two Revenue Streams from One Investment

Sometimes the best initial customer acquisition strategy in online marketing is not SEO, but paid search. When properly implemented, a paid search campaign will literally make the phone ring and therefore develop immediate revenue for your company. Once the paid search campaign is firing on all cylinders, we can then re-invest the profits into an SEO campaign – essentially getting two revenue streams from one investment.

For more insight visit Search Engine Optimization Services