Best SEO Pricing: How Much Does SEO Cost in 2023?

SEO pricing 2023 varies a lot by industry, location, what’s included in the SEO package and more.

Without knowing a lot about your company, it’s hard to give a concrete answer on exactly how much you should budget for SEO in 2023. However, we can give you a general idea.

Based on the average cost of SEO services in 2023, you can expect to spend:

• $2,000 to $7,000 per month for an average monthly SEO package
• $100 to $350 per hour for SEO consulting
• Starting at $2,000 for project-based SEO work

It’s a wide range, we know. A lot depends on the industry and needs of your company, as well as the breadth of experience of the SEO agency you choose.

It’s also important to understand what those numbers mean, because cheap SEO services are almost always too good to be true and cost you more in the long run.

Quality SEO is complex work that requires specialized expertise and tools.

To further help you decide your SEO budget, we’ve broken down the information further. We hope this helps you better understand exactly where your SEO costs should fall. We’ll go over:

1. Why you should invest in SEO
2. What actually goes into pricing an SEO package
3. What a decent monthly SEO package must include
4. SEO consulting: The alternative to a done-for-you SEO package
5. How much small businesses should be spending on SEO
6. Red flags to watch out for when it comes to low-cost SEO
7. Ways to keep SEO costs down without cutting corners

Let’s take a detailed look at how much SEO costs in 2023.

1. Why Should You Invest in SEO?

Fact: organic search accounts for 53% of all web traffic on an average website. Meaning if you’re not showing up in Google Search, you could be losing out on more than half of your potential customers.

And SEO is the most reliable, long-term strategy for getting your website seen by the people who buy what you sell.

That’s not to say it’s a magic bullet. SEO doesn’t work overnight. But when it’s done well, SEO is an incredibly powerful marketing tool that works alongside PPC advertising, social media marketing, and email marketing delivers lasting (and often increasing) value over time.

• Pay-per-click advertisements get your name out there quickly, but at a cost, and that cost fluctuates as the ad auction changes. SEO takes time, but once it’s established, it delivers a steady flow of relevant traffic for free.
• Social media platforms are powerful, but different platforms go in and out of fashion all the time. SEO leverages the value of stable search engines (mainly Google and Bing) that continue to gain influence on our lives.
• Email marketing gives you the freedom to say almost anything, but you can only communicate with existing leads and customers. SEO helps get your message out to new people who are specifically interested in what you offer.

It’s not so much a question of whether SEO pricing is worth it in 2023, but of how much you should invest in SEO based on your business’ needs and goals. Understanding the different types of SEO services available and how those services are priced will help you make an informed decision.

2. What Goes Into the SEO Pricing and SEO Packages?

Pricing for SEO packages largely depends on:

• SEO Agency Experience: You get what you pay for. Seasoned agencies tend to cost more, but they also know what works. They won’t waste your time on unproductive or outdated SEO strategies.
• Project Scope: Large-scale SEO campaigns will not only need more content, but also more labour and resources, while small-scale campaigns have a smaller price tag.
• Location: SEO agencies charge different rates depending on the demand for their services and the number of potential customers or clients in their area. This is where remote work is advantageous for agencies and clients alike — it lets agencies reduce operational costs without sacrificing quality or talent, which translates into cheaper rates for you.
• Pricing Model: There are different SEO pricing models, and each impacts the cost of SEO in a different way. An hourly or project-based model may be more cost-effective for you if you only need a few specific SEO fixes.
• Business Size (Startup vs. Mid-Market vs. Enterprise): Larger enterprises tend to require a broader scope of work, including more extensive website optimization, content writing and link building, so they require more expensive SEO packages.
• Existing SEO Strategy: SEO pricing depends on the state of your existing strategy, including existing website, backlinks, and content. Starting from scratch will obviously require more work and a greater cost since there’s more ground to cover. Having to reverse an existing SEO penalty will also require specialized penalty reversal work before or concurrent with SEO optimization.
• Goals: Want to dominate a particular keyword? Overtake specific competitors? Get a certain volume of traffic per month or year? Your goals play a big part in how much SEO costs, since you’ll need different approaches depending on where you want to end up.

Ultimately, what you budget for SEO isn’t just about what others are spending. Instead, it’s about what you need and want from your SEO campaign.

3. What Does a Monthly SEO Package Include?

A monthly SEO package usually includes a mix of SEO tactics to support an SEO strategy created based on your business’s current SEO standing (rankings, work already completed, penalties, etc.), goals, budget, and competitive landscape.
An SEO package priced at the higher end of the SEO pricing spectrum ($7,000 per month) will include more services than one at the lower end ($2,000 per month.) It could also include going after more, or more competitive, keywords.
When a company is new to SEO and starting from scratch, monthly SEO services will likely include research and setup tasks that lay the groundwork for success, including:

• Keyword and competitive research
• SEO Audit (on page SEO, technical SEO, off page SEO)
• Set up analytics

After the foundation is laid, monthly SEO services tend to transition to technical fixes that improve the health of your website to maximize SEO results, including:

• On-Page SEO fixes
• Off-Page SEO fixes
• Technical SEO fixes

Afterward, the focus generally shifts to ongoing optimization and content creation. Depending on your needs, it might take the form of a specific number of content pieces per month, or ongoing on-page and off-page SEO optimizations.
Overall, what a monthly SEO services package includes is subject to your company’s current and future goals, as well as your budget. Get in touch to learn more about the SEO services we can provide you on a monthly basis within your budget.

4. What’s Included in SEO Consulting?

If you already have an in-house marketing team with some SEO or content writing experience, you may be able to benefit from SEO consulting services, including:

• SEO Audit: The first step in implementing an SEO strategy is a detailed SEO analysis of your website that identifies exactly what’s preventing you from getting the results you want.
• SEO Recommendations: Second opinion on your current SEO plan with recommendations on tactics and keywords, etc.
• SEO Training: Providing training on SEO content, linking, technical SEO, and other SEO tactics to your in-house marketing team.
• SEO Implementation: Usually project-based services which can include fixing an SEO penalty, performing SEO audits and fixes, working on keyword projects, and compiling reports as needed

If you’re not sure if you need SEO consulting or a full SEO package, we offer free 20-minute consultations — for those who are interested in learning more about our professional SEO services without the commitment.

5. What Should SEO Cost a Small Business?

There is no reason why a small business can’t invest in SEO, even if you’re starting with a smaller budget.

In fact, small businesses can often benefit the most from SEO since they can’t just throw money at advertising like their large competitors can.

Generally, a small business’s SEO costs fall within this average range:

• $2,000 to $7,000 per month for a monthly SEO package
• $100 to $350 per hour for SEO consulting
• Starting at $2,000 for project-based SEO work

SEO agencies usually offer tiers of service, with the most comprehensive option costing more than the most basic.

Small businesses that are just getting started in SEO often start with a smaller package that includes things like keyword research, monitoring, and a focus on a small number of realistic keyword targets , then scale up once they see results.

6. Are Cheap SEO Services Worth It?

We mentioned above that you can expect a monthly SEO package from a professional SEO agency to range from between $2,000 and $7,000 per month.

Professional SEO Consulting runs from $100 to $350 per hour.

What if that’s just too much? Is it worth digging to find an even cheaper SEO service?

Here’s why the answer is always no.

While they may seem like a great deal at first, cheap SEO services often use manipulative tactics that go against search engine guidelines and cost you more in the long run.

Google and Bing are well aware of these shady practices. In fact, they deploy advanced machine learning algorithms to actively hunt down and penalize websites that use manipulative black hat SEO practices.

That can cause you to lose traffic, get blocked-listed, and potentially forfeit all of your future search traffic to your competitors.

Cheap SEO services are a huge risk to your company and brand so it’s important to know how to avoid them. The biggest red flags that you’re dealing with shady, cheap SEO providers include:

• Big Promises for Low Price Tags: Long-term SEO success takes a lot of manual work that can’t be done on a budget. You either have to settle for a small number of keywords or pay more later for the work that needs to be done.
• No Long-Term Strategy: Cheap SEO companies offer short-term solutions, but this isn’t realistic. Either they aren’t doing their job or they’re just looking to get quick and easy money from unsuspecting customers.
• No Transparency: Having visibility over the SEO process allows you to assess the results and make necessary changes. Never trust an SEO company that isn’t transparent with you.

If you’re looking for a quick fix to your online marketing strategy, don’t fall for cheap SEO pricing. Contact a reputable agency and see what can be done quickly and on your budget.

7. How to Keep SEO Costs in Check & Get the Best ROI

You don’t want to risk your business’s success by hiring an agency that offers SEO on the cheap.

At the same time, quality SEO doesn’t have to break the bank.

If you’re on a tight budget, making smart decisions in a few key places can help keep your costs down in order to get the most bang for your buck.

Here’s a quick lowdown on keeping costs in check while still getting the best SEO ROI:

• Focus on High-ROI Keywords: The best keywords to target aren’t always long-tail keywords or even competitive keywords — just the words and phrases that have the best chance of producing a good return on investment for your business. Any SEO work you pay for should start with solid keyword research to inform decisions about what to target.
• Test Keywords with Advertising First: Keyword research is important but not always foolproof. One way to test the viability of target keywords is to bid on them through paid search (e.g. Google Ads) before investing in SEO for that same keyword. That way, if the keyword turns out not to be profitable, you won’t waste your time or money chasing it organically.
• Keep an Eye on the Competition: Studying what your most successful competitors are doing can provide valuable insight on your own SEO strategy. Always insist on competitor research as part of your SEO package.
• Play the Long Game: SEO is a long term investment and it’s important to be realistic about ROI. This is especially true for small brands who may need a little more time than larger brands to rank their content. You should be prepared to invest in SEO for at least 6-8 months to see results. If you don’t have enough time or budget for that, stick to other digital marketing tactics like PPC or email marketing to get your brand in front of the right people sooner.

At TrafficSoda, we are committed to helping you get the best ROI with a strong, strategic approach. Get in touch to learn more about SEO pricing and how businesses can keep their costs low while still achieving solid results.

Want More Specific SEO Pricing? Request an Estimate to Find Out How Much SEO Will Cost You in 2023

The average cost of professional SEO services ranges between $2,000 and $7,000 per month for a monthly SEO package, or between $100 and $350 per hour for SEO consulting.

SEO pricing in 2023 varies depending on the scope of your SEO needs, the competitive landscape, and your goals, as well as external factors like location.

If you’re still not sure how to budget for SEO in 2023, we’ll do the hard work for you. Contact us now for an estimate of what you can expect to pay for professional SEO services tailored to your needs.

2023 SEO Checklist: 7 Best Expert Tips to Guide Your SEO Strategy

Keeping up with SEO trends in 2023 is key to staying competitive and reaching more customers. That’s why we compiled this SEO checklist — to give you a year’s worth of SEO tips in one neat package.

SEO is constantly changing. The best SEO tricks that worked 6 months ago may not be relevant today — and what’s worked in the past could even cost you a Google penalty now. 

So, where should you concentrate your efforts? 

Here are some of the SEO trends our experts are watching for in 2023 and what you need to be paying attention to as well.

1. Improving E-A-T — Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness
2. Leveraging Featured Snippets
3. Optimizing for Voice Search
4. Improving Mobile User Experience
5. Enhancing Video SEO
6. Utilizing New Google Shopping Features for eCommerce
7. Keeping Up Image Optimization

If you want to move the needle on your website’s search rankings, we’re here to help. Get in touch with our SEO Team to learn more about our services here at TrafficSoda.

1. E-A-T is Crucial, Strengthen Those Signals

E-A-T — Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness — is the most important acronym you’ll use in 2023

This plays a crucial role in Google’s ranking system, especially when it comes to high-stakes subjects like health, safety, or finance.

On multiple occasions Google has come out and reinforced the importance of your website’s E-A-T signals.  

Remember, Google’s ultimate goal is to provide it’s users the most relevant and accurate results. They want their users to love the ‘Google Experience’ and keep coming back.  

In order to find the best results Google uses artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies to identify what a search query means and provide the best possible answer. 

This also means this AI and machine learning needs to eliminate junk, spam, and inaccuracies from its results. Which is a tall order because, you know, the Internet.  

Showing Google that your site is worth their user’s time, will remain of absolute top importance leading into 2023. 

What E-A-T Means For Your SEO Strategy

• E stands for Expertise, meaning you hire real subject matter experts to create, or at least collaborate with you to produce, high quality content.
• A stands for Authoritativeness, which means that you and your website are recognized as a leading source of accurate, timely information on your particular niche.  
• T stands for Trustworthiness, which means you have real reviews and mentions from real people (especially people who are also experts in your niche.)

If you’re doing all the above, but still aren’t seen as a leading authority in your niche, then building your brand recognition is crucial. Here are some ways to get started: 

• Detailed, transparent About Us and Contact Us pages. Trustworthiness starts at home. When visitors visit your website, they should have no doubts about who you are and what you mean, and they should be able to contact you easily. 
• Back up your facts. Throughout your content prove you know what you are talking about by linking to high authority websites like .edu, .gov, etc.  
• More and more positive reviews.  More than your competitors, with more than satisfactory ratings 
• Your own Wikipedia page, or at least mentions. It’s hard to fake authority on Wikipedia since if you aren’t legitimate, your page will be removed quickly. 
• Backlinks and mentions on authoritative websites. While press releases are a good starting point, you really want to aim for mentions, news articles and interviews on other authoritative and trustworthy websites. 

There are a lot of SEO trends that will take effect this year, and all of them involve the E-A-T of your website on some level.

2. Featured Snippets Matter More Than EVER

Believe it or not, it’s been nearly a decade since Google launched Featured Snippets ‒ a.k.a the info boxes you see above searches. 

And they’re becoming more and more powerful by the minute.  

Featured Snippets now show up on 41% of all queries and account for an astounding 35.1% of all clicks in organic search results.

Here’s an even bigger shocker: when you ask Google a question, Featured Snippets show up 99% of the time…except for “How” questions, where it’s more like 52%. Still a majority. 

To marketers, this reality is at once a tremendous opportunity and a massive existential threat. 

When Google uses your page as a Featured Snippet, clickthrough rates can more than double overnight. It’s a huge boon to your organic traffic and a badge of honor for your site’s credibility. 

But when one of your competitors owns the Featured Snippet instead — especially for your most valuable keywords ‒ they overshadow your presence in the SERP completely. 

It pays (literally) to claim that spot for yourself. So, what can you do to get Featured Snippets in 2023?

What Featured Snippets Mean For Your SEO Strategy

Getting your website Featured in Snippets means playing ball with Google’s artificial intelligence. 

According to Google, one of the biggest driving forces behind Featured Snippets in 2023 is an AI model called the Multitask Unified Model or MUM. Essentially, the model compares the top bolded text portion of a search snippet result with established high-quality search results for relevance, accuracy, and credibility. 

Google also plans to use more warning messages when a search doesn’t generate results that have “high confidence.”

As a marketer, getting Featured Snippets in 2023 means you need to:

• Focus on reinforcing your website’s Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness (E-A-T) as much as, if not more than, keywords. 
• Continue building up high-quality content (not just text but video, audio, and images) and backlinks that underpin trust and authority. 
• Through your content, answer relevant questions that factor into customers’ journeys. 
• Create content that covers all points of your customer’s journey rather than just one or two. Newcomers to your product or service might ask, “What is [Product]?” but they’ll soon want to know, “How does [Product] work?” and eventually, “Who offers [Product]?” Make sure you answer all of these questions! 

The importance of Featured Snippets in your SEO strategy in 2023 cannot be overstated, as you’ll see in the rest of this SEO checklist, starting with the very next point… 

3. Conversational Queries & Voice Search Deserve Special Attention

Spoken searches have been slowly but steadily on the rise since Google Voice launched in 2009. Moving into 2023, about 40% of the population uses voice search and 71% actually prefer using voice search over typed search, so you can expect the upward trend to continue.

The  top three key facts you need to know about voice search in 2023 are as follows: 

• In contrast to text-based searches, voice searches are longer, more conversational, and almost always take the form of a question. Where do I find [Product]? How do I use it? What does it taste like? How much does it cost?  
• Most voice searches take place on-the-go, using smartphones rather than in-home devices (a.k.a. “smart speakers.”) So, picture people sitting in the car, not on the couch. 
• More than 50% of voice searches are for local services and businesses like restaurants and retail stores. Think of search queries that end in “near me.”

In other words, if your business is local, voice search matters to you, and optimizing for voice search should be a key priority for your SEO strategy going into 2023.

What Voice Search Means For Your SEO Strategy

As a starting point for optimizing for voice search, consider the following:

• Long-tail keywords. These are now essential to securing competitive SERP positions, especially conversational queries that show up in voice search.
• Speakable Schema. While still in beta as of writing, Speakable Schema is the Google-approved way to optimize your website for voice search.
• Local listings. Review your company’s Google and other local listings to make sure they include everything customers could ask about: operating hours, location, product selection, price range, wheelchair accessibility, and more. Google will pull from these listings to answer voice queries, so make sure it’s right!

Finally, remember what we said earlier about MUM and featured snippets. A lot of the principles for optimizing snippets are similar to those for optimizing voice queries.

4. User Experience on Mobile Is Still the Gold Standard

Mobile first indexing has been a reality since 2019 and it’s not going to change any time soon.  

Yet every single day, we see websites from huge companies that still aren’t on board with Google’s mobile-first indexing best practices. 

If you feel your SEO efforts aren’t doing much, and your site isn’t very mobile-friendly, fixing that issue could be the key that finally lets your site’s rankings flourish.

What Mobile-First Indexing Means For Your SEO Strategy

Here’s the good news: Google is very transparent about what they want to see when it comes to optimizing your website for mobile users in 2023. 

First, you need to make sure your mobile site is as Google-friendly as possible:

• Have the same content, structured data, alt text, and meta robots tags on both your mobile and desktop sites 
• Make sure Google can see your primary content and don’t lock it behind “lazy-loading”  (anything that requires swiping, clicking, or typing to load)
• Verify both the mobile and desktop versions of your site in Search Console 
• Use mobile URL hreflang for mobile URLs, and desktop URL hreflang for desktop URLs 
• Don’t block mobile URLs with the disallow directive 
• Don’t use URLs that change every time the page loads for your videos or images 
• Don’t use fragment URLs on your mobile version (a fragment URL starts with a # at the end)

Mobile-first indexing aside, mobile devices are now the first point of contact for many customers when they’re looking for information about your products and services. So it’s vital you make sure your site can be viewed easily on any device and that the customer can find what they’re looking for quickly, no matter how small their screen may be. Add it to your 2023 SEO checklist!

5. Optimize Your Video for SEO

Google has featured video in its search results for some time now.

And since over half of customers make buying decisions based on video, ignoring it in your 2023 SEO strategy is like leaving money on the table.

What Video Means For Your SEO Strategy

Video content can rank well if it’s optimized with descriptive and relevant information, including meta info and structured data.

Google has published a detailed overview of what it looks for in video SEO; some of the most impactful points include:

• Give each video its own dedicated page, where the video is the most prominent subject. This page is necessary for some Google features, such as Key Moments, Live Badges, and other rich results, to pull your video and give it maximum exposure. There’s no penalty if you put the same video on a dedicated page and another page with other information (like a news article or product details.) 
• Create and submit a video sitemap so that Google’s robots can easily find and understand your videos 
• Use a high-quality, relevant thumbnail that explains what your video is about and why people might want to watch it

Google has also added two structured data features to help people find answers through videos faster:

• Seek markup, which allows Google to identify and display Key Moments automatically and dynamically 
• Clip markup, which tells Google exactly which timestamps to label and use for the Key Moments feature (like a manual version of seek markup)

You can use Clip or Seek markup to make video results in Google Search more clickable and help users find answers more quickly. It’s a win-win!

6. Improve Your eCommerce Site’s Visibility with Shopping Graph

Google is already the world’s leading search engine, but with the skyrocketing growth of online shopping, it’s also aiming to become a leading eCommerce platform as well. 

Recently, Google also launched the Shopping Graph feature, lets customers find your store’s products across Google, — not just on the Shopping tab but on the SERP, YouTube, Google Images, and Google Lens (snap a photo and Google will identify the product and tell you where to buy it…how cool is that?) 

And as of now, you can add your products to Google Shopping for free — or, mark up your listings so that Google does that heavy lifting for you automatically.

What Google Shopping Graph Means For Your SEO Strategy

There are two ways to go about getting your products onto Google’s Shopping Graph:

1. Manage your listings manually using Google’s Merchant Center  

2. Use newly-added Search Console Merchant Listings for guidance on adding Product structured data to your product pages.
   

Anyone who sells products online can benefit from this easy win. Your products will get free exposure by Google on a credible, sleek, and cool platform. 

If your business sells products online and Google’s Shopping Graph isn’t on your SEO checklist in 2023, you’re losing a huge opportunity that your competitors might not decline.

7. Make Your Images Worth a Thousand Clicks

It might seem like an easy task to optimize your images for the web, but chances are that it’s a tad more complicated than you think. 

For many years, Google has been recommending that you use alternative text (alt text) and other optimizations for images on your site. Yet, many businesses still don’t take this seriously or they think it’s a waste of time. 

Nowadays, it is not just about boosting your Google ranking but also accommodating the millions of customers who rely on alt text to navigate your site — who will leave you in the dust and never look back if you don’t offer it. 

So, now’s the time to do an image audit on your site to see if you need to make changes to get up to speed with what Google (and customers) expect from you in 2023 and beyond.

What Image Optimization Means For Your SEO Strategy

• Create good URL structure for your images: Google uses the URL path and file name to understand your images, so make sure your URLs are built logically 
• Add structured data: Structured data lets Google Images display your images as rich results, including a prominent badge, which drives targeted traffic to your site 

• Optimize for speed: Images often make up a large part of a page’s size, so use image optimization and responsive image techniques to make it fast and easy  
• Use descriptive alt text in the alt attribute: Alt text improves accessibility for screen reader users and low-bandwidth users who can’t see images on web pages 

It is time to do what Google says and pay attention to your website images. Your bottom line will thank you for it!

Leverage These 2023 SEO Trends to Reach More Customers Online

Google changes its search algorithms 500 to 600 times per year. Every day of the year. And as clever as we are as marketers and SEOs, Google’s algorithms are getting smarter by the second.

A successful SEO strategy for your business depends on staying on top of the latest SEO trends in 2023.

Following these SEO tips will help you kickstart the year with a boost in ranking and more qualified traffic. 

If you need help moving the needle on your website’s search rankings, we are happy to help. Get in touch with our SEO Team to learn more about our services here at TrafficSoda.

Is SEO Worth It? How to Measure SEO Return on Investment

If you‘re here to learn how to measure SEO return on investment, then you’re already on the right track ‒ because you’re thinking about what actually matters. 

Sure, marketers can talk all day about how great SEO is…  

But let’s be realistic: the only real way to know if SEO is worth it to you is to calculate its return on investment. 

Yes, it is possible to reliably measure the impact of SEO on your bottom line. In fact, it’s much simpler than some marketers make it out to be.  

We’ll tell you exactly how to measure the ROI of your SEO, step-by-step, so it’s easy to know if SEO is worth it for you.

How to Measure the ROI of SEO ‒ and the Impact of SEO on Your Bottom Line

It’s all too common for business owners to invest in some form of SEO and, at the end of the day, have no idea if that SEO is actually worth it…or if it’s money going to waste. 

It doesn’t help that some marketers claim measuring the ROI of SEO is impossible. They’re either wrong, or dishonest. 

As long as you have the right data, the formula you use to calculate SEO return on investment is pretty straightforward.

Here’s a quick and easy formula you can use to determine whether SEO has been worth your money in a specific period:

• (Value of Conversions – Cost of SEO) / Cost of SEO

There it is. And in the rest of this article, we’ll explain exactly how to get the data you need to fill in this formula. 

Of course, we’d be lying if we said there are no challenges involved with calculating SEO return on investment. We’ll also help you cut through those challenges so you get the clearest possible picture of your SEO return on investment. 

But first, let’s grab the data we need to measure the ROI of SEO.

Step 1: Determine the Cost of Your Investment in SEO

First, you have to calculate how much SEO cost you over the timeframe you want to measure. 

When you work with a professional SEO agency, this step is as simple as it gets. You can find out how much you’re paying just by looking at the bill.  

If you do all your SEO in-house, or a hybrid of in-house and agency SEO services, the breakdown will be more complicated. Some of the costs you’ll need to factor in include:

• Any in-house staff who contribute to on-page and off-page SEO, including content creators and copywriters
• Web designers and developers who contribute to technical SEO, as well as setting up SEO tracking like Google Analytics (more on that later)
• Monthly or annual subscriptions to SEO tools like SemRush, Ahrefs, or anything else you use for traffic analytics, site auditing, keyword research, list management, etc.

When you add these costs up, you’ll have a figure that can be used in your SEO ROI calculation.  

Remember that these costs may change monthly. Don’t forget to take those changes into account when measuring your SEO return on investment for a specific timeframe.

Step 2: Measure Conversions From Organic Traffic

In a nutshell, organic traffic is any traffic to your website from a search engine that you don’t pay for directly.  

Whenever someone clicks on your site in Google search results ‒ as long as it’s not one of your ads ‒ it’s organic traffic. 

Since SEO is all about boosting organic traffic, conversions from organic traffic provide one of the best metrics for measuring the ROI of SEO. 

To get that number, we recommend using Google Analytics to track your organic conversions. You can use it for free and it just works. 

The way you set this up will depend on the way your business and website work, and we won’t go into too much detail here. Setting up conversion tracking correctly is extremely important, so we recommend getting help from an experienced developer or digital marketer. 

Once you have Google Analytics tracking your conversions, calculating the value of SEO conversions is a breeze:

• For sales made on your website, simply segment conversions by channel and look at revenue for organic traffic. Narrow down the timeframe and you’ve got your number.
• For leads that come in through your website, this is trickier, because the actual conversion happens offline and not every lead converts. You need to assign a value to your leads overall and use that as your value. Best practice is to base that value on the average lifetime value of a customer multiplied by closure rate %.
  
  

Step 3: Use This Formula to Calculate SEO Return on Investment

After you’ve collected your data, plug it in to this formula to calculate your SEO return on investment: 

• (Value of Conversions – Cost of Investment) / Cost of Investment

Here’s an example.  

Say that organic traffic got you $100,000 in revenue over one year, and that the costs associated with SEO during that time were $20,000.  

Put these figures into the formula above and we get: 

• ($100,000 – $20,000) / $20,000 = 4

So for every $1 you spent on SEO, you got $4 back. This means you’re getting a 400% return on investment.  

Using this formula, you can calculate the ROI of your SEO campaign over any timeframe you choose, as long as you know both the costs and the returns.  

You can then use this data to help determine whether SEO is worth it for you or not…with a couple of important caveats.  

We’ll look at those caveats next.

3 Challenges of Measuring SEO Return on Investment

Real-time conversion tracking has made it easier than ever to reliably measure the return on investment of your SEO efforts.  

However, not even the best tracking tools can perfectly measure every facet of your organic search traffic. SEO is a time-consuming and complicated process with many moving parts. 

Because of this, quantifying SEO return on investment will always be a bit of an art as well as a science. 

Here’s what you need to know about the tricky part of measuring SEO and its ROI:

Challenge 1: SEO Costs Are Complex

First, measuring SEO ROI can be tough because of the sheer number of variables that contribute to a successful campaign. 

An effective SEO campaign is based on a number of variables, from high-quality content, to link building, to technical SEO and more. 

Having an agency handle your SEO makes quantifying these costs a breeze. You know how much you’re paying them, so use that figure in your calculation.  

Tallying the costs of your internal SEO efforts is harder. 

While PPC advertising has clearly identifiable click costs, SEO is about earning clicks rather than buying them. Those clicks are technically free. But the SEO you spend to get them isn’t. 

You have to consider things like the cost of in-house labour (which you can break down by individuals or tasks), the SEO tools you use, and all the time you or your managers put into running that team smoothly. 

It’s a lot, and you’ve got to get it right if you want a true picture of your SEO ROI.

Challenge 2: SEO Takes Time

When you’re doing SEO, it can be hard to tie specific investments and returns to work that was done in a specific timeframe. 

That’s because it can take a long time for SEO to pay off. Quick wins are certainly possible, but there’s no guarantee.

From our experience and that of other reputable SEO agencies, we can estimate it will take 4-6 months for SEO to start ‘working’, meaning it begins to produce measurable results. 

So, the simplified principle of comparing returns and investments over the same period does not quite work. It gives you a solid idea of whether things are working, but it’s not 1:1. 

One way to get around this is to calculate ROI on a category, page, or keyword level, rather than an arbitrary time period, as Ahrefs describes here. 

To learn more about SEO timelines, check out our blog post on how long it takes to get SEO results.

Challenge 3: Even ‘Perfect’ Conversion Tracking Isn’t Flawless

This problem isn’t specific to SEO.  

But SEO is no exception. 

The simple fact is that customer journeys are often more complex than any tracking software makes them seem.  

Yes, Google Analytics will tell you if someone converted after visiting your website through an organic search. However, there may be things going on behind the scenes that you aren’t aware of or can’t track.  

For example…say you watch a YouTube video about an interesting product. Then you Google that product, go to the website, and buy it.  

Organic traffic gets 100% of the credit for that conversion…but it was really the YouTube video that got you there, wasn’t it? 

Here’s another example with the opposite effect. Say you Google a product on your phone, find the website, and make a mental note of it. Later, you fire up your laptop and visit the website directly by typing the URL in your browser, and buy the product.  

Since you switched devices, direct traffic gets 100% credit…but wasn’t that really an organic conversion?  

You can see how customer journeys can twist and turn in ways that can skew your attribution.  

So, no matter how well your Google Analytics is configured, you cannot always pinpoint exactly how many conversions you owe to SEO. 

The more traffic and conversions you have, the more accurate it becomes, but it will never be perfect. 

This begs the question: why even bother?

What You’re Missing If You Aren’t Measuring SEO Return on Investment

Put simply, not measuring your ROI is almost as bad as not doing SEO at all. 

In spite of the challenges of measuring SEO ROI to pinpoint accuracy, you’re missing out on a lot of valuable data if you don’t do it at all. 

The average business generates 53% of its traffic through organic search. Meaning that SEO does have an impact on the bottom line for most businesses. You can’t afford to ignore it. 

And unless you know your return on investment for every dollar you spend on SEO, you can’t decide which strategies are working best, which you should scale, and whether something’s wasting your money. 

Since SEO is a long-term strategy that generates results over time, you may not see a positive ROI right away. But once you’re past that, SEO will begin to deliver a return and can continue to pay dividends for years to come. 

When that turning point comes, you won’t know it unless you’ve been actively measuring the ongoing ROI of your SEO work. And if you don’t know, you could end up pulling the plug on a profitable strategy just when it’s getting started.

If you need help moving the needle on your website’s search rankings, we are happy to help. Get in touch with our SEO Team to learn more about our services here at TrafficSoda.

On-Page vs. Off-Page SEO: Know the Differences for Best Results

SEO Timelines: How Long Does It Take to Get Results?

You might have heard that search engine optimization (SEO) is a quick and easy way to get

Here’s why that’s wrong.

The truth is…once upon a time, SEO could work quickly.

But as search engine algorithms have evolved and the online space has become more competitive, the SEO landscape has changed drastically.

Every business owner wants to see results come quickly. But when it comes to legitimate, proven SEO strategies, results simply don’t happen overnight.

Any agency that says otherwise is not to be trusted.

Below, we’ll cover the real factors that will affect how long it will take for SEO to get measurable results for your business, as well as the minimum time investment to really get your money’s worth from SEO.

How Long It Takes for SEO to Generate Leads and Sales

When it comes to SEO, business owners often ask, “How long does it take for SEO to work?”

Which usually means, “How long before I rank #1 in Google?”

This is the wrong question to ask because ranking #1 in Google isn’t the end goal. The goal is to generate qualified leads and sales opportunities.

In other words, organic search traffic is only as valuable to your business as the revenue it generates.

The real question that you should be asking is, “When will SEO start generating sales and leads for my business?”

Based on our experience and that of our colleagues at other reputable SEO agencies, we can give an estimated timeline of 4-6 months for SEO to begin producing some form of results, which could include:

• Overall improved average ranking
• Website being indexed for more keywords
• More traffic to your website and opportunity to close that traffic

The above timeline represents our average client experience. This is when things start to work, but not necessarily when you achieve your end goal.

There are numerous factors to consider when determining when you can expect to begin seeing SEO generate results. It would be impossible to cover them all in detail here ‒ but some of the most significant factors are:

1. Competition for high-priority keywords
2. How effective are the site’s inbound links
3. Healthy, SEO-friendly site
4. Regularly published content on the site

1. Importance of Competition in SEO Timelines

Generally, the more competing websites that your business is up against, the harder and longer it will take to see your website climb to the top of search engine results.

In a crowded industry, many of your competitors will have experienced SEO professionals behind them to improve and maintain their rankings. Understanding the level of competition based on your products/services and location will help you get a sense of how long it will take for SEO to get results.

For example, a small local massage therapy clinic will face less competition than a real estate brokerage business serving a large city, amongst many other real estate brokerage businesses. That same brokerage would face less competition than a national-level mortgage company with competitors in every market in the country.

Search results are all relative, and that is the key to understanding why SEO works differently for different businesses online

2. Importance of Inbound Links in SEO Timelines

Acquiring more inbound links will help your business achieve the SEO success you are striving for more quickly… but it is not all a numbers game.

Quality over quantity, like most things, is always the way to go. Having fewer, high-quality links from relevant websites will have a much greater impact on your overall results than having a greater number of low-quality links from other irrelevant websites.

Acquiring higher quality links are much harder to earn, having them on your website will make it more difficult for your competitors to replicate and compete with you. As well, higher-quality links last longer and keep their effective power.

The speed in which your business online can acquire links takes time, make sure to look out for any abrupt increase in links. This could identify an inorganic attempt at a manipulative ranking and negatively affect your business’ SEO.

3. Importance of a Healthy SEO-Friendly Website

SEO isn’t just about keywords and content. Your website’s internal workings also have a big impact on how it ranks.

When your website appears on a Google search results page, it becomes part of what Google offers its users. And Google cares a lot about its users’ experience.

So, a big part of its search ranking algorithm is focused on checking the ‘health’ of your website. It looks at technical aspects of the site that have an effect on the user experience, like:

• Site speed
• Crawl errors & broken links
• Mobile friendliness
• Site structure
• Navigation
• txt
• Sitemap

When your site is healthy and SEO-friendly, the work being done on the content and external links side takes effect much faster. On the other hand, a site that is not technically optimized for SEO will move slowly or not at all.

4. Importance of Content in SEO Timelines

Quality content published on your website plays a vital role in how quickly you will see SEO results.

There isn’t a set length/word count for SEO optimized content. It just has to be long and detailed enough to solve the visitor’s problem.

Along with quality content requires consistent content. Maintaining a publishing schedule will encourage Google to come back to your website to read and learn more about your expertise. It also encourages users to return, suggesting a positive user experience that Google’s signals will notice.

If you focus on producing helpful content that answers specific questions your target market may have, you will see results. Users will come, have a great experience and build trust with your brand (possibly reaching out) and Google has more information about you to determine where else you can rank.

SEO Timelines Then vs. Now

To explain why SEO doesn’t happen overnight, it helps to recognize a crucial difference between the early SEO landscape and what we see today.

Old SEO: When Low Competition Got Big Results

In the early days of SEO, it was possible to skyrocket a website’s search ranking by identifying and optimizing for a small number of high volume, low competition keywords.

The trick was to target keywords that were popular, but not competitive.

You could build an entire strategy around these ‘golden’ keywords, climb to #1 in the rankings, and have most of your traffic come from them within a few months.

Nowadays, it’s extremely rare to find a single keyword or small group of keywords that can drive a lot of traffic to your site.

People just don’t search like that anymore. Plus, the web is way more competitive today than it was in the early 2000s. There are nearly 2 billion websites today, compared to just 17 million in 2000, an increase of nearly 11 thousand percent.

New SEO: Targeting the Long Tail

Today, people are adding more words than ever to their searches to get faster, more specific results.

They’re asking specific questions that they need answers to, rather than searching individual keywords and seeing what comes up.

We call these searches long-tail keywords. And search engines like Google and Bing have gotten very good at delivering long-tail keywords relevant results.

Long-tail keywords are:

• Easier to rank for, because they’re less competitive
• Generate more revenue, because they’re more specific
• Account for a higher search volume in total than shorter “golden keywords”

Today, generating search traffic that brings you leads, sales, and revenue means curating a larger number of natural language or long-tail keywords searches that grow and change over time.

Is SEO a Good Investment?

When you have the funds and stamina to be patient with the results, as well as stay in the game for the long haul, SEO is an incredibly powerful marketing tool that all businesses should invest in.

A minimum of 4 to 6 months of SEO services will allow you the time and money to see the results that you want. For businesses that do not have a budget for SEO services for up to a year, we recommend a few key steps regardless:

1. Make your website SEO and user friendly – you may need a professional to help with this as a one-time project
2. Work on building out good quality content on your website if you build genuinely helpful content to your target market, it will pay SEO dividends down the road
3. Consider using additional funds towards paid advertising to start generating traffic to your website

It’s important to remain patient throughout the SEO process. When businesses fail to see results after a couple of months of SEO services, they are tempted to give up ‒ when they could actually see results in a matter of weeks. We often refer to this time period as the “trough of sorrow” in the industry.

We as agencies or individuals cannot control a lot of the SEO process. We don’t control Google, their algorithm, or what competitors do. The only thing we can do is understand what Google is looking for, give them what they want, connect with our customers and give them what they want, and we will start to see results.

SEO is not only a science, but also the art of adapting to changes in the industry.

Remember that SEO results increase over time, not overnight. Your results should be significantly better after 12 months than they were after 6 months.

To get the results that you need online for your business, professional SEO services are OFTEN worth the time, energy, and money that you invest.

If you would like more information about our SEO and digital advertising services, please do not hesitate to contact our SEO team here at TrafficSoda.

3 Fatal Risks of Cheap SEO Services (Avoid at ALL Costs)

Here’s the hard truth: cheap SEO is too good to be true.

Just because you’re better than your competitors in ‘real life’ (better products, better workmanship, better results, etc.) doesn’t always mean you’ll get a better search ranking.

Google and Bing search results are extremely competitive.

If somebody’s ranking higher than you, it’s likely because they hired an SEO company to optimize their website.

And the only effective way to outrank them is to beat them at their own game.

There’s just one problem…

Bad SEO is Worse Than No SEO at All

Many SEO companies are more interested in your money than your success.

Doing SEO cheaply is not only detrimental to your website traffic but can also harm your business’s reputation both online and offline.

The long-term risks of cheap SEO include:

• Loss of business revenue;
• Getting banned from search results, period; and
• Handing all your potential search revenue to your competitors

Those are the consequences we want to help you avoid. So, in this article, we lay it all out on the table.

Read on to learn all about:

1. How, exactly, cheap SEO can tank your business
2. Biggest red flags of cheap SEO
3. Black Hat vs. Grey Hat vs. White Hat SEO (and why it matters)
4. What GOOD SEO can do for your business
   
   

1. How Cheap SEO Can Tank Your Business 

Google and Bing are for-profit companies, and their customers are search engine users. This means that both Google and Bing want to give people the best, most relevant search results. Search engines have spent years building parameters to identify high quality, relevant search results.

The problem is that bad actors frequently reverse engineer these parameters to exploit rankings, which results in low quality search results and poor user experience. As a result, Google and Bing regularly update their algorithm to identify manipulative SEO tactics and suss out actions that are fake and spammy.

Cheap SEO services often use manipulative tactics that go against search engine guidelines.

Google and Bing actively scan the web for these shady practices using the most advanced machine learning algorithms available.

You might not get caught right away, but you must assume you will get caught at some point.

And when that happens, you can lose traffic, get block-listed, and potentially forfeit all your future search traffic to your competitors.

a. Cheap SEO Decimates Your Website Traffic

Organic search is by far the #1 source of website traffic online, and the most authentic.

If you successfully rank at the top of the search results, you will benefit from more clicks and visits to your website, presenting an opportunity to turn those clicks into customers.

Poorly done SEO can tank your ranking, meaning customers won’t be able to find you and will click on your competitors instead.

b. Cheap SEO Gets You Block-listed from Google and Bing

Google and Bing’s top priority is to create a positive user experience, so penalizing manipulative tactics is smart business for them.

Using cheap SEO tactics will cause search engines to penalize and even ban you, banning you from appearing in search results at all until the issue is rectified.

A search penalty means a real and immediate loss of potential revenue for your business.

If you ignore the penalty, you will find it almost impossible to recover. Your site traffic will continue to drop steadily, leaving you behind the competition and low on stamina to make a comeback.

c. Cheap SEO Funnels Revenue to Your Competitors

Now, you’re block-listed from the search results. So, who do you think all those potential customers are going to click on instead of you?

You already know the answer.

Shooting yourself in the foot with manipulative SEO is like handing your customers revenue on a silver platter.

Plus, ethical SEO practices can take weeks or months to have an impact. So, the more time and money you waste on cheap SEO, the longer you will have to wait for results on good SEO when you finally switch gears.

It’s not worth the risk.

2. How to Spot Red Flags for Cheap SEO 

Hiring cheap SEO services can have serious immediate and long-term consequences to your business that can be difficult or even impossible to recover from.

To avoid them, you need to know what to look out for.

First, there’s some SEO industry jargon you need to know. These are the labels we use to separate cheap, manipulative SEO tactics from legitimate SEO: white hat, gray hat, and black hat.

1. White Hat SEO services follow the search engine-approved guidelines for optimizing a website. White hat SEO focuses on improving the user experience and creating high-quality content. There is zero risk in using white hat SEO.
2. Black hat SEO services rely on manipulating and violating search engine algorithms against guidelines to improve your search rankings. The short-term goals of black hat SEO services are to get you fast-paced wins to fool you into thinking their services have the best and fastest results on the market. Manipulating the algorithm is not effective because it can never keep up with Google’s constant updates, which results in your rankings being wiped out due to unethical practices. Black hat SEO is extremely risky.
3. Gray hat SEO services test the limits of what search engines allow, exploiting ‘gray areas’ in the guidelines. Once a gray hat tactic becomes known, search engines often crack down hard, which will cost you the same way as black hat SEO. The results do not stick well over time and require repeated work. Grey hat SEO is very risky.
   

No serious business should never engage in black hat SEO. Your website will no longer be trustworthy to users or search engines, and recovery could take years.

Although gray hat SEO is often sold as a ‘medium risk for a medium price’, which can be tempting for businesses on a tight budget, the risk is high and the results are not sustainable. Business owners should avoid this trap at all costs.

Overall, white hat SEO services are the only kind worth your money and time because the job done will be the safest and most beneficial for your business online.

So, how do you know when a company’s pitching you cheap, black/grey hat SEO? There are a few key phrases and promises that agencies will make that should ring alarm bells:

a. Big Promises for Low Price Tags

SEO is not rocket science, but it is not as simple as you might think. It’s not just sticking a bunch of keywords and tags on a website.

Achieving long-term success with SEO takes a lot of manual work that cannot be easily accomplished on a shoestring budget. Either you settle for a very small number of keywords, or you end up paying for the work that really needs to be done.

b. No Long-Term Strategy

Cheap SEO companies will offer you short-term solutions, but this is not realistic.

SEO is a long-term strategy. It takes time to gain the rankings you deserve. If the company you are considering offers no plan past one month, they are more than likely a scam. They are either not doing their job or just looking for quick and easy money from unsuspecting customers like you.

c. No Transparency

Do not trust any SEO company that doesn’t offer you transparency into what they’re doing. It is important that you have visibility over the SEO process so that you can assess the results and make changes as needed.

The best SEO companies will offer a full audit of your site and provide explanations for any errors found. They will also provide recommendations for how to fix these errors, give an overview of how to improve rankings, and show rankings progress.

d. Inexperienced Team

One of the most important things to look for when choosing an SEO company is their expertise and experience.

Do they have a website with a portfolio of websites that they have previously optimized? Do they have testimonials from satisfied clients? Can you find any information on them at all?

An experienced SEO company won’t mind telling you who’s on their team and should be eager to tell you about their experience. If they’re not transparent, they could be hiding something.

e. Guaranteed Results

No one can guarantee a #1 spot on Google.

It is an outright impossible claim to make for an agency, as SEO is a competitive practice that depends on hundreds of signals which can change at any point in the day.

What can be guaranteed are solid and safe practices that can win better results when done properly over time.

Agencies that claim their services will guarantee a specific result in a specific timeframe is one of the biggest warning signs for cheap, black hat SEO that will hurt your business.

What About Using Negative SEO to Attack Your Competitors? 

Usually, SEO is about trying to boost your own company’s search ranking. Negative SEO is when one company uses manipulative tactics to hurt a competitor’s rankings instead.

Negative SEO is gray hat SEO. A negative SEO campaign against your industry competitors is risky because the traffic attacks can be traced back to you.

Search engine algorithms can detect bad links from good links when competitors create spammy backlinks to tank your SEO and organic rankings online.

Search engine algorithms can detect bad links from good links when competitors create spammy backlinks to tank your SEO and organic rankings online. Google will penalize websites for building spammy backlinks that use anchor text to improve their ranking by matching the exact keywords.

Any mentions of negative SEO practices should be shut down immediately, the risk is simply not worth it.

3. The Long-Term Value of Affordable White Hat SEO

White hat SEO isn’t cheap, but it’s effective – and it can be affordable. When done well, SEO is the most cost-effective and reliable way to reach your target customers and understand what they are looking for when they search for businesses online.

Investing time and money into effective, white hat SEO services will benefit your online traffic, leads, and sales in the long run.

1. Search is the #1 source of website traffic. Organic search is a key way people find your website and become customers, whether you sell products or services online or offline. Being highly visible on Google and Bing is money in the bank.
2. SEO builds trust and credibility. SEO creates trust and credibility by providing a positive user experience that is easily discoverable on search engines. Establishing authority online through good content results in natural backlinks that boost your ranking. Online credibility takes time, working towards your goals of authority and credibility online takes time, patience, and affordable SEO services from an experienced agency.
3. SEO boosts local businesses. Using SEO will improve your local engagement and traffic online by connecting users to your business based on their location. SEO professionals can do this by optimizing the businesses website content and including local citations and backlinks to guide the user to their product or service. An experienced agency can provide effective, local SEO services at an affordable price.
4. SEO is quantifiable. With SEO, you can measure your progress using analytics. A competent SEO agency has people dedicated to connecting the dots and assessing the improvements made through SEO. This information can also be used to maximize ROI and ensure that your SEO remains affordable. Hiring a team that is knowledgeable about tracking analytics and SEO data is essential.
5. Good SEO means a better user experience. Google is dedicated to providing a positive user experience through relevant search results. Search engine optimization also means optimizing your user experience, so people love using your website and come back for more. Optimizing your website’s user experience will also help maximize the ROI from both SEO and other digital marketing efforts.
   
   

Bottom Line: Avoid Cheap SEO Services at All Costs

Cheaping out on SEO is never the way to go. This will only cost you more money and more problems in the future that could potentially be irreversible.

We hope that you now understand the risks of cheap SEO services and the benefits to investing in white hat SEO services that put your success first.

TrafficSoda has built hundreds of successful SEO strategies for companies, like you, looking to increase traffic, leads, calls, online purchases and more. When you’re ready to jump in with a personalized plan, reach out for your free strategy proposal.

Beginner’s Guide to Creating Quality Content Using SEO Practices in 2019

What did you last type into Google? Chances are whatever the question, it recommended a blog or article on the topic.

In 2019, search engines like Google care about solving the intent of the searcher. This means that the viewer’s attention must be grabbed, the information was helpful, and the article had steps in place to engage with the company.

Do you want to learn about how to write a quality blog post that helps your relevancy on search engines?

Here’s a beginner’s guide to everything SEO to optimize your next blog post.

Creating Effective Content

Your goal as a writer is to keep people on the website.

Content that is overly complicated or boring will cause readers to abandon your page. The experience that your audience has is an important one.

You aren’t the only one writing a blog today. Countless blogs are posted every day, so how do you grab people’s attention?

Well, it all starts with creating meaning content that educates or inspires your readers. How do you do that?

The first thing to do when creating compelling content, is to find a compelling topic to write about.

Choosing A Topic

The best thing to write about are things that both relate to your services and educational topics. Simply put, people find blogs by searching for questions they have. So, answer them!

The easiest way to identify this is to think like your audience and ask the following:

• What do they want to know about?
• What will they identify with?
  

This isn’t to say you should never write about your own business when it makes sense. Your company just won an award or was featured in a major new article? Perfect opportunities to write about what your company can do for the masses!

But for most blog posts, it’s best to focus on the industry’s questions. This is largely due to the fact that the people you are hoping to reach don’t know about you yet! If you only talk about your business or yourself, people won’t be able to find you by searching.

Are you stuck for ideas or have writers block? Consider talking to other people in the company in different departments or that have unique perspectives. They could be a gateway to ideas!

Here are some questions to ask regarding potential leads to topics:

• What are frequent questions from customers?
• What does our audience need help with?
• What do people wish they knew regarding our industry?
• What are others in our industry talking about?

It may be beneficial to start with a very broad topic. As you research and write, you’ll likely find subtopics that could be expanded on. Try to approach the broad topic in different ways to create different avenues for expansion.

Keyword Research

Keywords are the words or phrases that are commonly typed into the search engine. They are the main words people are looking for information on.

What are the words that your industry uses all the time? If you run a company that repairs air conditioners, your keywords could be “air conditioner repair.”

The concept of keywords is not to completely overwhelm your content with a keyword every sentence. It actually negatively impacts your search engine optimization because it’s considered stuffing.

Think about incorporating them naturally in the headlines and body, as if they were a conversation.

Language allows us to say the same thing differently. Maybe your keyword can be said a different way. Instead of repeating “air conditioner repair”, use a synonym. This can also help search engines to pick up on different nomenclatures because not everyone searches for the same thing the same way.

Develop a Long-tail Keyword and Title

Long-tail keywords are very specifically targeted keywords.

They typically are 3 or more words and contain a head term combined with more generic search terms. The head term should relate to what you want your company to be known for and what topics you want to provide knowledge on.

A good practice is to develop and focus on a single long-tail keyword.

Why are Long-tail Keywords Useful for Titles?

Often times the title is the opener for a question to be answered. Those who search for long-tail keywords will be the most likely candidate to read your post in its entirety and pursue your company further. They are the ones who will click down the conversion funnel.

Make a Working Title from a Long-tail Keyword

Everyone reads the title before committing to the rest of the blog. That means you have to make sure people are interested enough to continue by catching the viewer’s attention.

A working title is something you base the direction of your post off of. For example, using the broad topic of “video advertisements”, the working title could be “How to Optimize Your Video Advertisements in 2019”. We took the very general idea that could have been pretty much anything and made it specific.

Once you finish the post, go back to your title and rework it to align better with the end result. Your title should help people as well as search engines to decipher what the post will contain specifically. Readers will identify what they can get out of spending their time viewing your post.

Shorten Your URL Slug

A post slug is typically a viewer friendly URL name of a post or page.

They ensure clarity of the topic. For example, website.com/blog/our-first-blog.

Your slug doesn’t have to be the title of your blog. When slugs are overly long or complicated can be confusing and not memorable for users to find later.

It is also useful to have a consistent slug if the title changes. For example, if you intend on trying to better optimize your title to gain traffic, you don’t have to then also change the slug.

Best practice is to exclude years or numbers in general, this way you don’t have to change it if you update the page.

It’s important to keep the URL slug as short as possible without losing key information.

Optimize Image Alt-texts

It’s crucial to incorporate images throughout your blog to provide a visual interest.

Search engines can’t see images like we do, so you can’t optimize for actual images. What you can optimize is the alt text or name.

An alt name is information regarding what the image is about. From a search engine perspective, the best descriptions will better the results.

It’s an easy thing to forget but can ultimately help if you include them. Consider creating an alt text for your images based on your long-tail keyword or working title.

Additionally, including these will help with accessibility for impaired users and allow you to increase your reach.

Create an Interesting Meta Description

What’s the next thing users see after they read the title? The meta description.

The meta description is the brief synopsis of your article found right below the title. It is used by both viewers and search engines to provide information regarding what you intend to talk about.

Meta descriptions don’t directly affect your SEO; however, they are useful for including keywords. Searched information is often bolded if your article uses the keywords or the meta description does.

They should not mislead people into clicking on something they weren’t looking for. It’s good practice to use words that indicate what you want viewers to gain from reading further. This could be words like:

• Get
• Use
• See
• Learn

If you’re ever stuck on what to write to think of it as a headline. How would you get the attention of the viewer?

Including Strategic Blog Links

With more traffic, you’ll be able to develop better relationships with your viewers. You want users to feel that they can trust you.

So how can you create that trust with an informational blog? By being credible.

Including links to your sources throughout the blog will showcase that you have researched the topic and know what you’re talking about.

Now, including a link for every paragraph is not what you want to do. It’s best to sprinkle your sources only where it makes sense.

Likely at this point, you’ve got a few topics in mind for what you could write about, so plan accordingly! You can incorporate hyperlinks, Call to Actions (CTAs), to other blog posts of yours on related topics.

Have you already explained a topic that you mention? Link to it! This is good practice because if someone finds your content useful, they could find your services right within the blog.

Don’t Just Use Text

Plain text that all looks the same is frankly just boring.

By offering other types of media like images or videos will greatly increase the amount of time people spend on your article.

Including videos, especially near the top of your article, increases your chance of being on the front page of Google by 53 times. Why? Because people that take the time to watch your video, increase your bounce rate.

In the eyes of search engines, if people just view your page and then leave, it didn’t really help them. When people click to watch a video embedded on your blog, Google sees that as people finding valuable resources on your site. And it is more likely to recommend the article to people.

Most people would rather watch a video than read text, and giving people the option, puts value in your content.

If you’re just starting out on your blog or if you’re just looking to better your blog writing, this is an excellent map to creating quality content.

Make the most of every post on your site by incorporating these tips!

New Customer Acquisition vs Retention: Best Practices

Customers are the most important part of your business. It’s a fact. The ultimate goal of any growing business is to attract and nurture a loyal relationship with its customers. 

But customer acquisition and customer retention often compete for attention from your marketing budget.  

When faced with the reality that acquiring a new customer can cost five times as much as retaining an existing one, you may be tempted to throw all of your resources to attracting new business.  

The reality is that it’s important to dedicate as many resources to retain existing customers as it is selling to new ones. Both are essential and require separate strategies. 

Increasing customer retention by just 5% can increase profits from 25% to 95%. In addition, the success rate of selling to a customer that you already have is 60-70%, versus 5-20% for new customers. There is great value in keeping the right customers.  

Businesses need to craft a game plan that effectively attracts and retains customers with tactics that can be measured and altered as needed to achieve success in both areas. Here, we look at best practices for marketing strategies that identify and manage new customers differently than returning customers.

Attract Customers and Maintain Contact

Attracting a new customer takes time and patience.  

Consumers have more options than ever – not only in terms of where and when they shop, but also how. It only makes sense that retailers have to work harder and smarter to gain customer loyalty. 

To realize the benefits downstream, retailers will need to move the battle to the top of the sales funnel. Here lies the “awareness” and “interest” phase of the purchase experience.  

Strengthening the top of the funnel also means giving attention to the middle and bottom of the funnel so those initial prospects move forward to conversion.  

This is why it is so important to optimize all your digital assets – your website, landing pages, content, SEO, and social media campaigns – to work together as an effective marketing funnel. Talk to us about your business marketing strategies.  

When someone moves into the middle of your sales funnel, that means you’ve captured their interest. This is where you want to show why your product is the perfect fit or solution to your customer’s needs.  

How well you satisfy your customer’s needs will affect the likelihood that they will return. Returning customers will spend more often and will refer their friends and family. 

Know Your Customer

Is a customer someone who has purchased an item from your company within the last six months, or at any point in time? What about a repeat purchaser from several years ago? 

Say two customers bought from you yesterday. Today one searches for items from your company using a generic search (i.e. sports cars), the other—a branded search (i.e. Ferrari sports cars). Are they both considered your customers? Or should the one using a generic search have to be “re-acquired”? 

You would also want to consider transaction data – at what point in time is it unlikely that your customer will return? Will they still return after a year has passed? 

Understand Your Customer’s Purchase Path

Searches typically fall into the realm of new customer acquisition, situated towards the top of the funnel and comes at higher cost.  

However, this cost is justified when you understand that you can further nurture your customers to purchase using other channels such as email and direct marketing. 

A customer’s journey can be complex, so it is advisable to have a multi-channel strategy. For example, a customer may discover a new product on Instagram, view that product again via display ad retargeting, and later research that product on Amazon – only to finally purchase it after receiving a promotional email. 

Create Ad Campaigns for Acquisition and Retention

After defining who your customer is, divide your ad campaigns based on new or returning customers. For example, your ad campaign could target these 3 sets of audiences: 

1. Completely new visitors to your site. 
2. Those that have visited your site in the past 3 months but have not purchased. 
3. Lastly, this group has purchased from you within the last 3 months and would be returning customers. 
   
   

Set Unique Return Goals for Each Group

With your audiences set, it’s time to determine a unique, specific return goal for each.  

Generally, you should be willing to invest more (to a less efficient return) to attract new customers. However, since you have already invested in the returning customer, you should set a more efficient return goal in that case. 

Segment Further to Align with Your Customer’s Journey

Once you’ve obtained enough data to analyze, you may be able to segment each ad campaign further. You may be able to target each audience by device, or branded vs. non-branded search terms.  

Watch for KPIs of Success

Watch your key performance indicators to see if you are hitting your return goals. Are new customers in line with your new customer profile? Are you gaining new customers while maintaining the same level of profit? 

Your growth in search will naturally level off if you aren’t consistently refreshing your ad campaigns. It’s smart to develop a habit of making tweaks every 3 months or so, depending on your data results. 

If you would like to learn more about how to improve your customer acquisition and retention, contact us today.  

How Long Does It Take for SEO to Start Working?

One of the most frequent questions from clients of a digital marketing firm is “When will my search engine business rankings increase?”, or “How long does it take for SEO to start working?”

Business owners know the importance of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) as part of their online marketing strategy. They also understand that SEO strategies make it easier for search engines to find them, rank them higher, thereby increasing traffic to their website.

So how long do you have to wait before you see results? The short answer is “it depends”.

There are many variables to optimizing your website, however three specific criteria play a significant role: competition, inbound links, and content.

Competition

Depending on your product or service, there will be varying degrees of demand. The more competing webpages you’re up against, the longer it will take to see results. Depending on how well your competition’s SEO strategies perform, the longer it will take for you to rise in rankings.

If you are spending a great deal of time and effort developing and implementing your SEO strategies, you can be sure your competitors are doing so as well. Every time you post a new blog, your competitor may be doing the same.

Inbound links

The volume of inbound links to your website play a huge role. The quality of those links, the speed in which you gain those links, and historically have gained them also has an effect. The speed at which you earn links should have a relatively stable growth pattern. A sudden increase in links looks unnatural. If your link-building follows Google’s guidelines, that should happen naturally.

A large number of high-quality, high-authority inbound links (also referred to as backlinks) will flag site-crawlers, indicating that your website is an authority in your particular field. It’s almost like gaining a referral from someone for your product or service.

Content

Quality content matters a lot. High-quality content is original, relevant, authoritative, factual, grammatically correct and engaging. Your web pages need have no minimum or even ideal length. They just have to answer the question or solve the user’s problem.

A business blog is a great way to become a resource for information in your field that you add to on a regular basis. Blogs are a great way to increase traffic to your website.

Keep in mind that newer pages don’t rank as well as older ones. This graph shows that the average top 10 ranking page is at least 2 ½ years old.

Despite this, new content should be added to your website on a regular publishing schedule.

This encourages search engine spiders to crawl your site more frequently and speed up your SEO efforts. Also, users will return to your site more frequently looking for new content, further sending signals to search engines of the popularity of your site. User engagement is built and gauged over time.

SEO is An Investment

Ultimately, you need to be prepared to invest several months to a year before seeing the results of your SEO efforts. Why?  Search engines take multiple factors into account when ranking webpages. For example, Google uses over 200 ranking factors in their search algorithm! The takeaway is this: SEO can have a significant impact on the success of your business, so it is worth the investment of time and money!

Key Digital Marketing Statistics to Take From 2018

2018 was a big year for SEO. Google’s constantly-changing search algorithm evaluates over 200 ranking factors, and SEO is an increasingly complex science. We’ve compiled a list of statistics that stood out in 2018 to adapt to your marketing efforts in 2019.

Better content can increase traffic by up to 2,000%

Content should be your number one priority.

Last year, we witnessed just how big an impact content has on your overall digital marketing and SEO efforts. Informative, high-quality content is the pillar of a successful SEO strategy. The better the content, the more traffic it will drive to your site.

Strategically creating website content around a keyword or set of keywords is the first step in attracting traffic to your site. Blogs are an important piece of content that can work magic for increasing traffic. There are roughly 250 million blogs online right now!

Google is responsible for 96% of all smartphone search traffic and 94% of the total organic traffic

Yes, you read that right. 96%. Only 4% of all smartphone search traffic happens on alternative search engines.

Thus, it’s of utmost importance to have a mobile-friendly and Google-friendly website to ensure users have a seamless experience. As far as we can tell, this statistic will only increase in the years to come. If your website isn’t mobile of Google-friendly, you’ll be left in the dust.

Search Engines drive 93% of website traffic

Think about this for a moment. Almost 93% of web traffic comes through search engines, and just about 75% of all searchers click a link on the first page of their search results, never bothering to move on to page two.

So, how can you get your business to rank on the search engine’s first page? You’ll need three things:

• Time
• Patience
• A solid search engine optimization strategy

SEO is the leading driver of organic search ranking performance on a search engine results page. Before digital marketing took off, most marketing firms would create a brochure, meet with prospective clients and expect reasonable growth throughout their business. These days, that’s just not effective.

Today’s fastest-growing businesses are capitalizing on the digital marketing environment, and SEO plays an integral role. This will definitely be the case as we move into 2019.

WordPress accounts for 27% of websites around the world, but less than half of WordPress sites are up to date

What does this tell us? That it’s important to optimize your website for maximum performance. So, how do we do this?

• SEO-friendly URLs:
  • Google gives more weight to the first 3-5 words in your URL. Be sure to choose wisely!
• Titles optimized for SEO:
  • Title tags are one of the most important factors of on-page SEO. For best results, start your title with your keyword, or place it in the beginning.
• Add modifiers to your titles
  • Descriptive words like ‘best’ and ‘review’ are examples.
• Optimize your meta descriptions
  • Your description should complement your title. It should contain your main keyword as well.
• Eliminate thin content
  • When we talk about thin content, we usually think of its effect on search engine ranking, but you should also be mindful of how it impacts your clients or customers. Here’s how to fix it.
    
    

SEO has a 14.6% conversion rate compared to 1.7% for traditional outbound methods.

Cold-calling and direct mail are things of the past.

In 2018, we saw a 14.6% rate of conversion in SEO marketing.

That’s high.

SEO is such an effective method, in comparison to mail or cold-calling because it’s a direct response to the things people are searching for. SEO strategies can be tailored to your specific target demographic, much more so than marketing techniques of the past.

The average attention span in 2018 is 8 seconds

8 seconds. That’s how long you have to attract a potential customer.

Each year, that time is getting shorter and shorter as a result of the brain’s ‘digitized lifestyle,’ For example, the average attention span in 2000 was 12 seconds.

This means that your website, SEO strategy and social media efforts must grab the attention of the user instantly.

Looking to learn more about SEO and how it can impact your business? Contact us today to chat about your online strategy.

Find Out What Else We Do