How to convince your boss to invest in SEO
As marketers or SEO professionals, it is easy to get excited about website redesign and development projects, keyword research, organic growth, backlinking strategies, and other important SEO strategies, but the thing is, the CEO, CFO, or others in the C-Suite will not understand this.
While SEO is a component of a successful digital marketing strategy, it can get lost in translation. Commonly, higher management and C-Suites don’t find the value of SEO worth the investment, but this could be because they don’t understand it fully.
On the other hand, these professionals could have heard about SEO before, and get the general idea, but still need help with understanding it fully.
We all start as amateurs, and SEO experts need to understand this when presenting the value of SEO to get a larger marketing budget to implement SEO.
Here are five ways to help convince your boss to invest in SEO.
1. Explain why the company needs SEO
SEO provides a number of benefits for companies that many do not understand. If you want to increase your website traffic, the first thing you need to do is implement an SEO strategy. This means reporting your current visibility, showing current goals and how it would help to better meet them, lead generation opportunities, and showing search results that aren’t branded.
A great way to explain the importance is running a competitor analysis, and provide a list of the competitors that are ranking above your company. Another thing to show is not only the competitors they already know about, but the ones on search engine that are holding higher rankings.
2. Talk about costs and return on investment
Approximately 93 percent of all online experiences begin with a search engine.
C-suites and other higher-management employees will more than likely need to understand the cost of this investment and the return on it. “How much will this cost?” The answer depends on the strategy that needs to be in place, but the best is to check out the top SEO tools and software.
What are their subscription fees and monthly fees? Is one better than the other due to its price and more options with it?
Need a local SEO expert? Call us for our SEO packages. No software needed on your end, just monthly pricing. We do all the heavy lifting.
3. Show that organic and paid are two different strategies
“We need to run advertising campaigns.” Yes, you can run advertising, but for long-term strategies, you will want organic SEO.
The reason that most owners and companies want search engine marketing (SEM) versus SEO is because it provides instant results. It is great, but this doesn’t help with ranking. If you want to populate for “top Denver investment firm” you have to implement organic SEO.
Our SEO consultant Denver experts try to explain that organic SEO is the perfect solution for long-term investments and can provide more qualified investments in the future, but SEM can be implemented in-between to have quicker results.
4. Explain how long the process can be
The timeline is one of the most important things to bring up. Organic SEO is not a race, it is a marathon, and once you start, it is best to continue on the course.
What happens when you start SEO and suddenly stop? It can be a major hit to your current ranking. Our experts typically notice a decrease in rankings almost immediately. The keywords that have been ranking for a considerable amount of time are now dropping faster.
Organic SEO typically takes six to nine months before a company will see results. It is important to understand that any company that provides immediate results will hurt your website in the long run.
5. Take the time to meet in smaller groups or one-on-one
If you are not an expert in a specific area, it can be intimidating to sit in a bigger room with all your co-workers and feel comfortable asking questions. While not everyone will feel this way, it is important to take the time to implement one-on-one meetings or smaller meetings to provide everyone with a space to ask all of their questions.