How To Achieve ROI From SEO

Studies have shown that Search Engine Optimization can provide the greatest Return on Investment of any type of online marketing. People using search engines are proactively looking for what you are offering with the search terms they enter and if they find your site and contact you, they are among the most qualified prospects you will encounter. Google’s stock goes for upwards of $500 a share for a good reason, because people use it and those who pay for Keyword advertising get results from it. If your site can rank in the natural search listings (see this article for an explanation: Paid vs. Natural Search Results), rather than paying per click through the paid listings, you stand to see a flood of targeted visitors to your site.

Obviously, gaining top rankings on the search engines is not always an easy thing to accomplish. Another study shows that over 90% of the sites that are visited by people performing searches are the ones displayed on the 1st page of search results, this is detailed in our article: Click Behavior Research. As the old saying goes, “You have to spend money to make money”, this holds true in SEO and you have to be willing to invest the effort and resources required to gain top rankings on the search engines. This varies based on a number of factors, but the key elements to evaluate to ensure a successful SEO campaign include:

1. Selecting the best Keywords possible (See details in our article: Choose Your Keywords Wisely)
2. Evaluating the metrics of your website
3. Evaluate the competing sites that currently hold the top rankings for those Keywords
4. Enhancing your website to surpass those sites on the targeted subject matter
5. Increasing the number of quality links to your site to surpass the value of links the top ranked sites have

To learn about how to make the evaluations of your site and your competitors with the tips provided in this article: How to Check your Website from the Eyes of a Search Engine.

Typically the Keywords that will be the most valuable for your site to rank for, are ones that are already being heavily competed for. By performing thorough evaluations on the Keywords and on the competing websites, this will provide a good idea of the level of effort that will be required to achieve top rankings for those terms and a plan of action can be made from there.

All efforts and resources that you put into SEO can be considered an investment. Once you achieve top rankings, it typically requires far less effort to maintain them and you will reap the rewards as long as your site holds those rankings.