Regardless of the type of business or organization you run, there is unquestionable value of having your brand, products, or message reaching your target audience. Even with the costs of print, paper, and distribution it is still common to see leaflet campaigns where the goal is to blanket an audience that has an uncertain interest level. Considering that users searching online are specifically interested in a topic, in essence ‘searching for you’, the ‘SEO value‘ of being found by investing in search marketing/website optimization starts to become extremely obvious.
What’s the Value of SEO (Search Engine Optimization)?
Regardless of the type of business or organization you run, there is unquestionable value of having your brand, products, or message reaching your target audience. Even with the costs of print, paper, and distribution it is still common to see leaflet campaigns where the goal is to blanket an audience that has an uncertain interest level. Considering that users searching online are specifically interested in a topic, in essence ‘searching for you’, the value of being found by investing in SEO starts to become extremely obvious.
Showing up on page one of Google is essential
During the keyword research phase you will likely discover that some product or service you provide is being searched for, using search engines like Google, on a massive scale. In most cases these search volumes are far higher than expected because you only deal with a small portion of requests that currently know about your business. As an example, say that there were 5,000 people a month using five of the most popular search terms, searching for a product/service you provide. If your website is #1 : Almost all 5,000 people will be likely to click your link and visit the site. If you are in the top 5 : Hundreds of people will see your site and be tempted to click on it. If you are on page 2 : Traffic will cut off massively, less users will see your site. After page 3 there’s not much point in even talking about the results… Caorda’s goal will be to get your website to page one and the #1 position for relevant search terms while avoiding difficult ‘unattainable’ targets or unrelated traffic.
Will SEO Pay for itself?
Investments need to have a positive return, so how can we tell what the ROI will be for SEO? Even for a local business, you would likely get at least a few hundred new qualified visitors to your website just by making a small effort in terms of SEO. You could expect many more if your website listing appeared at the top of page-one search results. From those hundreds or more new website visitors per month, you’d be likely to get at least a few dozen new customers in your store per month – month after month – for less than some companies pay to traditional print media for a one-year campaign. (Caorda is offering basic business SEO packages starting at $1,500 per year, and our one-time audit starts at $500! Click this link for SEO package details.) Let’s continue to compare that to other methods of advertising…
SEO vs. Traditional Marketing Costs
Small print ads in local, free-circular publications such as Boulevard Magazine can cost from $750-$1,000 per month. Boulevard claims a circulation of 30,000 copies per month in Victoria, BC. Let’s be generous and estimate that 50% of those copies actually get leafed through in detail. Again, we’ll be generous and estimate that of those copies read in detail 50% are read by people who notice your ad in particular. Best case scenario, your print ad gets noticed by 7,500 people that month. But ask yourself: How many of those people are in the market for your product or service at the moment when they notice your ad? One in five? One in ten? It’s really anyone’s guess, since there’s no honest way to track print marketing like we can track online marketing.
The point is that you are left with a few hundred to a thousand people, at most, who noticed your ad and might also be in the market for your products. The numbers reduce even further when you consider the ratio of people that will remember you when they put the publication down. With very little call-to-action in printed advertising, you have a potential disconnect between your print advertisement and making a real sale. How much is it going to cost you to place just that one single print ad every month for a year? With just a local magazine it will cost you $9,000-$12,000 per year. Compare that to having thousands of people notice your website listing each month, being able to alter content at any minute, and hundreds of interested visitors actually visiting your website for as little as $1,500 dollars or less for a successful one-year search engine optimization campaign – and the value of SEO becomes unquestionable.