Despite the dramatic changes in the digital landscape over the past few years, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) remains an extremely popular digital marketing strategy. The main objective of the concept has remained the same, to improve business’s positions in search engine’s natural listings (Chaffey, 2011). This is to ensure more potential customers will see their websites, leading to more brand awareness and ultimately more sales. In short a sound SEO strategy is based on:
- Deep understanding and analysis of business objectives
- Competition analysis
- Keyword analysis to understand search patterns
- Target demography and geography analysis
- Technical understanding and assessment of website
If you would like to understand how SEO works a little more following two-minute video gives a clear and simple explanation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S32LC7BSnUo
Although the video was posted in 2014, it remains extremely relevant as although the google algorithms are constantly being updated, the objective of SEO has not change. Titan Growth write about how effective SEO is and how widely adopted it is becoming, however for a start-up with limited resources it is important to weigh up the pros and cons of the digital strategy before diving straight in.
The Pros
Reaching the phenomenal amount of online traffic
One of the main benefits of using SEO is that it delivers a continuous flow of targeted traffic at a potentially low cost. According to statistic brain the number of google searches in 2016 was 3.3 trillion. This is almost incomprehensible to the human brain, averaging out to over 9 billion searches per day! Using SEO effectively, this gigantic source of potential customers can be tapped into.
Reaching consumers with high intent to purchase
The visitors of online websites are searching for specific products or services and therefore have a high intent to purchase. The conversion rates of SEO tend to be higher than many other digital channels. As explained by Digital Marketing Philippines the Search Engine Journal reported that the close rate of leads generated by SEO can reach 14.6% compared to 1.7% from email marketing or print advertising. As you can see in the image below from the same blog, the click-through rate from the search results past third in a search engine is much, much lower. Clearly there is potential for a sufficient increase in sales if a company manages to use SEO successfully.
Potentially Low Cost
It is low cost in the sense that there are no media costs for ad display or click-through. The only costs arise from the optimisation process where agencies will be paid to improve positions on the search results (Chaffey, 2011). For a start-up however, these costs may still be considered high.
Reasons not to use SEO
No Guaranteed Results
Even though the goal of SEO is to get higher rankings in search engine results, it can never be guaranteed.
In fact there is no method to guarantee a number one ranking in search, however using PPC (pay per click) a business’ page will show up as an advert right at the top, for example you can see below if I search for a skiing holiday the first three results are adverts using PPR. Although it has been proven that people do not click on the ads, it has an impact on a business’ branding because it has been seen (Rowles, 2015). In a study conducted by Kritzinger & Weideman (2017) they concluded that for e-commerce based websites, SEO is more effective to use. However, when instant traffic is required, and large expenditure or time resource is not possible PPC is likely to yield better results.
Time Consuming
For a start-up company your website is likely to be newly launched, this means that SEO can take a long time to get organic traffic. After you begin to get this, it does not mean you can stop SEO, instead you must now maintain your position as well as look for ways to increase traffic to your site by targeting more content and keywords.
How can customers search for your product/service if they do not know about it?
As a start-up, depending if the product or service you are selling is completely new, it seems extremely unlikely that people will be searching for it on a search engine. In this scenario, SEO may not be the best use of your time or money.
SEO cannot keep up with constant changes
In start-up companies it is extremely common that the values and propositions will be altered or fine-tuned frequently based on market feedback or opportunities that have arisen. Unfortunately SEO cannot keep up with these changes. YourStory give a good example of this: if you had been working on optimising your homepage for three months with a specific keyword, but after a pivot your homepage will now become a gateway page and the keyword now needs to be optimised for a subpage. For SEO this will now require fresh indexing, content creation, link-building and internal linking which lengthen the time for SEO to show results.
Should Start-Up Stop Using SEO?
The answer is no. The reality is, no matter how innovative your products or services are. If you don’t have an online presence, people will not be able to find you and you will have a seriously hard time sustaining “the momentum you need to propel a growing business to success” (Goodwin, 2012).
Although it is definitely worth investigating other alternatives such as PPC, when done well SEO could bring a lot of potential business to your website.
If you would like to find out how to use SEO well the following blog by Search Engine Journal has some useful insights.
References
Baye, M.R.; Santos, B.D.; Wildenbeest, M.R. Search engine optimization: What drives organic traffic to retail sites? J. Econ. Manag. Strategy 2015, 25, 6–31.
Chaffey, D. 2011, Internet marketing: strategy, implementation and practice. Harlow: Prentice Hall Financial Times.
Goodwin, M. 2012, Search engine optimization secrets for small businesses: a quick start reference guide, Createspace.
Kritzinger, W.T. & Weideman, M. 2017, “Parallel search engine optimisation and pay-per-click campaigns: A comparison of cost per acquisition”, South African Journal of Information Management, vol. 19, no. 1, pp. e1-e13
Rowles, D. (2015). Digital branding: a complete step-by-step guide to strategy, tactics and measurement. London: Kogan Page.