• Without good SEO, a site will fail to gain traffic unless that traffic is paid for, visitor by visitor.
• The site may grow to about 200 visitors per month, then stop. That isn’t generally enough to get buyers.
• The site may bring lots of traffic, but no one may buy – because good SEO also helps get buyers, not browsers.

Usually the effects of SEO are cummulative. That means that they’ll build, month by month. So your investment (and it is an investment) yields increasing returns each month for many months.

So let’s do a little elemental math…

You want your website to earn HOW much this year?

• $200? Who am I kidding, right?
• $2000? Well, it’s something, but not enough to justify the effort…
• $20,000? That’s sounding a little more reasonable…
• More? Sure! Bring it on!

Do you really think you are going to earn more without putting something IN? Usually SEO accounts for 25-50% of the startup costs of a website, if we are talking about a low end website. It should return more than it costs, within about a year.

Our rule of thumb for our clients is that if we cannot project, with a fair degree of certainty, that a business will get at least a 200% ROI from SEO expenditures, that we won’t recommend it. But we generally expect to see far better than that. Done right, good SEO will give you more like a 10 times Return on Investment, often more.

So why would you feel unwilling to spend several hundred dollars on the basics? The simplest equation is to be willing to spend about one quarter of what you expect to earn (that is profit, not gross), on good SEM (the whole search engine equation including site optimization), the first year. In later years, that may drop some, but it won’t ever stop, because SEO does change over time, and it will need to be adjusted at least once a year, more frequently if you are in a highly competitive niche, or if you want aggressive growth.

The real trick is to get the right professional – one who can give you something that will bring a return, even if you have a low budget, and that will give you a higher return if you have a higher budget.

SEO doesn’t just pay for itself. When it is done wisely, it provides a higher ROI than almost any other marketing method, up to a point. After that point, the ROI declines. So get a pro that understands the most important things to do – the ones that bring the highest results. And then do what they tell you to do for follow up marketing.

Nothing else will give you as much, for as little.

Not only are such sites deadly to a business because they lack personality, they also are deadly to SEO, for a number of reasons.

1. They are likely to use Flash and heavy JavaScript in the site template. They do this to look impressive, but in fact, it is usually NOT the most efficient way to achieve the impact needed, and so much is used that the code is bloated and cumbersome for people and search engines to utilize. Search engines may time out before they even get to the content.
2. The templates are identical, from one site to another. Usually, the only thing that changes is the individual page content, and the images in the template (still shared by many sites). Search engines do pay attention to that, but ONLY if they get through the code to the actual content.
3. You cannot control the code of the page at all, or any template elements. If it is inefficient, too bad.
4. Once you build in one, you cannot move it. If you wish to move it into something more SEO friendly, you will have to rebuild it – and your individual page URLs will likely change in the process. Regaining ground lost from that can take some time.
5. Most have a way to put in metatags, or control alt-tags. But those are not the most important parts of page coding.
6. Many times, people will pay a monthly fee for this kind of site, taken in by the illusion that “it is so easy anyone can do it”, and will end up with an ineffective site, and never know why. For the same money, they could have got a much better site, that actually worked to help build their business.

The silly thing is, typically a good quality site costs the same, or only a very little more. And the difference in performance pays for the difference in price, many times over.

I wish there were a simple solution. But every one that we have seen has been a disappointment, and as new clients come to us, asking for help in getting their site functioning, this impression has been reinforced over and over, and it is clear that when a site that is built in this kind of system does not work, half of the blame falls squarely on the system itself.

This happened with desktop computing environments also – DOS was hard to use, it took someone with a high degree of skill to use it. Then GUI interfaces came along, and some tasks got easier. But the parts that made it easier, made it harder to do the deeper level stuff. With each improvement in ease of use for the non-techie, the technical stuff got buried deeper and troubleshooting got more difficult.

Websites have gone through a similar divergence. It is easier and easier to create a website. But it is getting harder and harder to create a GOOD one that WORKS. And it takes even more expertise to create, maintain, or troubleshoot the increasing layers of structure which make up a website. We can do MORE with one, but it takes a true expert to keep a professional website running underneath.

This is happening with SEO in a progressive way. Installing metatags and alt tags is now a simpler process – almost anyone can do it in nearly any web editing environment. You don’t have to know code to do it.

But getting in GOOD tags is increasingly difficult. The factors which determine good usage, and the increasing competitive issues make it more challenging to do it RIGHT – right, meaning effective.

The number of things which now affects SEO is much greater than what influenced it just three years ago. And it is growing, all the time. Hence, the divergence – the simple things are getting simpler, but the complicated things are getting more and more complicated.

I do not see this getting better. The more we rely on computers to do our work for us, the greater the need to automate complex tasks. And each automation of those tasks leads to another layer of complexity in the specializations which create that automation in the first place. Each time we make it easier for anybody to insert a bit of optimization, we increase the competition, and search engines respond by including more factors in their equations as people find it easy to use, or abuse, the new capability. Divergence will continue to increase.

Is there a solution? I don’t think so. Beyond keeping up with the more critical aspects, and keeping a finger on what makes the biggest difference in monetary returns, we can only recognize the divergence, and develop strategies to cope – to develop strategic partnerships which help us define our focus in a way that gets both sides of the job done, no matter which side we are on.

1. Make sure you are in good shape now. If there are things you know you need to do to stabilize your business, get them done. Those in better shape will more likely weather the storm without serious consequence.
2. Watch for changes in your stats, and be ready to react if you experience a downturn for two months in a row that is not due to typical seasonal changes.

SEO is first, about common sense. Doing what gets the biggest results for the least amount of effort, first. Recession does not change that rule. Nor does it change the fact that you optimize for people first – in fact, it makes that issue even more important.

As competition for customers gets more aggressive, you can expect your competitors to pay more attention to the finer points. This means it will be harder for you to maintain a position.  You may have to utilize ethical back door tactics more than before, or you may need to move to the next level of SEO sooner.

You can also expect more of your competitors to resort to “negative seo”. This is when they do things to HARM your site, rather than doing things to elevate their own. You cannot pinpoint who is doing it, nor can you prove that they have harmed you, so if this happens, there may be no recourse. Until Google decides to protect site owners against this kind of tactic, the possibility will be there.

The one thing you must NOT do, is panic, or get desperate. Desperate people make foolish decisions, and SEO is a field where there are all sorts of invitations to make those unwise decisions! Do not make any attempt to manipulate search engines. Your goal is to increase the accuracy of  the indexing – through honorable tactics.

Be willing to put in some work building a reputation, and be patient in allowing your business to build momentum. Those factors are part of every business, but during economic hard times, it may be harder to gain that momentum – so watch your stats for TRENDS. You should see gradual increases if you are marketing and optimizing properly. If your results plateau, then it is time to reassess.

Remember that the end goal is not just TRAFFIC, it is HIGH QUALITY traffic, that delivers paying customers. Anyone who tells you that SEO does not affect site conversions does not understand how to do it properly – Good SEO takes customer conversion into account, and seeks to target visitors who want what you have, and to create good copy which appeals to people first.

It is inevitable that the web world will become more aggressive in the coming months, even without the high likelihood that we are heading for economic hardship. Smart business owners will get their websites in shape now, and then watch their stats for signs of change, so they can catch and adjust early when it may be relatively inexpensive to do so.

Typically, there are things that do a lot, for little effort. Then there are things that do a moderate amount, for moderate effort. And there are things that do very little, but take a great deal of effort to accomplish.

In prioritizing SEO, it only makes sense to do the easy effective things first, and to save the harder stuff that gains less for later. To determine what that is, we figure the initial cost or  time involved, and we figure the likelihood of it coming back to us within a year. If it is likely to do so, then the effort or expense is likely to be justified.

The SEO equation varies some from site to site, and target market to target market. Still, there are some things that we can generalize about. One of those, is which things should be done (assuming nothing has been done) and in what order.

1. Good content. Make sure every page in the site has high quality content that is indexable by search engines.  This is relatively expensive in comparison to other tactics, but it is CRITICAL. If you can do nothing else, do this. If you must pay for one page at a time to be edited, do it. Nothing else will help you nearly as much as good content.
2. Title tag. Pretty much the next most important thing. A good one can help your site, a bad one can hurt it. An indifferent one won’t do either.
3. Good site and link structure. The links from page to page, and their categorization is the next most powerful SEO on-page factor.
4. We then get down to a plethora of elements such as top text, meta tags, alt-tags, formatting, filenames, and other minor factors. These are things that are generally done, not because they are powerful, but because they are easy to do, and they add up to a reasonable amount together.

There are other things far beyond this – but the benefit to cost ratio declines to the point where they are not affordable to many startups or struggling businesses.

You’ll notice that backlinks are not on that list. This is because they are so time and resource intensive that getting them is typically something that a business owner has to either pay for, or do, over the long term. They should be done, consistently, alongside any other SEO work that is being done.

It is impossible to make a complete list of SEO priorities in order. But the above list is designed to help site owners understand what will make the biggest difference, and which elements will give them the best return on investment.

Marketing math helps you to be able to predict what will work, and what won’t, and to pin down a marketer on whether they’ll offer reasonable assurances of meeting your goals.

It starts with some basic understanding of your business. You need the answer to this question:

1. What is your average profit margin on your product or service?
2. What is your average profit per visitor? This means, figure out your average profit per SALE, and then divide that by the conversion rate. If 1 in 50 customers buys, then you’ll take your average profit per sale, and divide that by 50. This will usually be a very low number.

If you are contracting for search engine marketing services, they come in three types, and the way that affordability is calculated is different for each type:

1. One time services, such as optimization. Affordability is calculated by figuring out how long it will take you to realize a return on your investment. Generally, you invest up front on this, and then watch for results. Good SEO should pay off within 6 months to a year, and should show indications long before that. This means that you’ll need to have a reasonable assurance that you can increase your sales enough to pay for the service within a reasonable time frame. 6 months to a year IS reasonable with this kind of service. Longer is NOT reasonable!

   Take your current monthly sales, times your average profit margin. Then calculate how many months it will take to pay off the deficit before you make a profit on it. If you are investing more than 6 months of profits from your business, then your budget may need readjusting. If you are a startup, and have no sales track record, then estimate what you anticipate earning in six months, and base your maximum budget on half of your expected profit margin in 6 months, times 6.

   Good SEO will last for about 1 1/2 to 2 years, before you’ll have to look at doing it again, but it also will typically set up a growth pattern. Results can be FAR more dramatic than this, we’ve seen clients who were in the black within 2 months.

2. Payment for backlinks, article marketing, blogging, or other ongoing services. We are, again, working with average profit margin, and average monthly profits. Knowing your profit per customer can help here, because it can help you know how much more traffic you need to get in order to get a certain amount of profit.

   To start though, take your current monthly profit, and determine what you can afford, and what you want to gain. If you want to gain a profit of $100 per month, you’ll be smart to INVEST $100 per month, and EXPECT to see that in about 4-8 months, depending on how aggressively competitive your industry is. The thing about this kind of marketing is, when it REACHES the point of profit, it then keeps on climbing, even without increasing your monthly investment, so when you reach the profit point, it is straight on up from there. You start with a deficit each month, which declines month by month (if the work is done right), and which reaches the profit point, and keeps climbing.

3. Pay Per Click. It is NOT profitable for most microbusinesses. But you can tell before you even start, whether it is likely to be.

   Start with your average profit per visitor. That is, average profit per sale, divided by number of visitors per sale. If it is less than $.05, stop right here. You won’t even get out the door with Pay Per Click, you’ll be in a losing situation right from the start. In order for PPC to work, you need a profit per visitor amount of at least $5, and even then, it is going to be tight, especially if you are paying for someone else to do the marketing for you.

   Pay Per Click NEVER works for small product industries where you are selling items for just a few dollars, and where the average sale per customer is low – for example, if you sell DVDs for $15 each, and your average customer only buys 1, then Pay Per Click isn’t even an option.

If you need assistance figuring out profit points and affordability of marketing, feel free to contact the author through this website. It can be confusing if you don’t understand how long it takes to work, and what it is supposed to do when it does work. A little math ahead of time though, can help you know what to expect, and how to know if it is working. It can lay the groundwork for spotting trends that will indicate that the method IS working, even before you reach the profit point.

The affordability and math equations are different for every business. You can’t make an assumption, until you’ve actually done the math for YOUR business.