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Should Small Businesses Invest In SEO During A Recession?
By Mike Tekula (c) 2008


These are tough times, no doubt. The pinch is on every business
to cut unnecessary costs and improve efficiency. Those
businesses that were squeaking by to begin with are now in
danger of closing their doors.

Advertising is usually one of the first items on the chopping
block (though it shouldn't be). You've got to cut costs, and
you certainly don't want to lay off any employees if you can
help it, so you start looking a bit more closely at your
marketing budget to see where you can rein in ad spending.
It's a natural reaction to a tightening budget, and there is a
good reason for it.

Most business owners know that you need to advertise.  Sure,
word of mouth is great - there's nothing like a referral from a
happy client to instill trust in a prospect - but you still need
to be proactive in getting the word out. The trouble with
advertising in the traditional sense is that it is difficult to
know whether your efforts are working and what is generating the
best value for your dollar. The uncertainty makes it hard to
keep throwing money into your ad spend. When your budget
tightens it is even harder to justify the cost when the benefits
are fuzzy at best.

But marketing on the web is different. The costs are lower,
return on investment can be much higher and traffic data allows
you to chop out the dead wood and optimize your budget. Search
engines are a primary driver of traffic on the web (second in
use only to email according to a report (http://zi.ma/ef920a)
by Pew Internet & American Life Project and comScore). Search
engine optimization (SEO), as a result, has received an
increasing amount of well-deserved attention.

For most small businesses, SEO is new. Some have considered it,
perhaps even done a bit of research on the topic, but haven't
yet invested in it. Others have invested in it in the past and
found themselves disappointed with the results. A few have
found real success.

In this economy, why should a company consider a new marketing
channel like search when they're already looking to cut their
budget? What about the risks involved in such a new endeavor?
What if it doesn't work? These are all valid questions. For
those who spend most of their time building and maintaining
their businesses and systems, reading up on what makes search
engines tick is unlikely. Understanding SEO enough to truly
leverage it for growth can seem a long way off.

So why SEO, and why now?

  1. Unparalelled ROI
     A 2006 MarketingSherpa (http://www.marketingsherpa.com/)
     survey of 3,053 client-side marketers determined that SEO
     was viewed as the most valuable marketing solution in terms
     of ROI, even higher than email marketing to in-house email
     lists. ROI is everything - especially in uncertain economic
     times.

  2. Targeted Traffic
     Traditional "push" marketing/advertising options often
     have you publishing an advertisement in a place where
     you're hoping it will get a lot of eyeballs. That's great,
     but the real question is: who owns those eyeballs? Are they
     the right people? Do they want or need what you're offering?
     With SEO, up front keyword research can tell you a lot about
     your market and what kind of language they're using. When
     you choose your keywords and optimize for them, you're
     addressing an existing need or desire - and you know that
     at least a good portion of visitors referred from search
     engines through your target keywords are looking for exactly
     what you're offering. In short, SEO helps to drive high
     quality traffic to your website and gets your message in
     front of the right people at the right time.

  3. Precise Tracking
     Web analytics allow you to track your users with a great
     deal of granularity. The most basic and easy to set up
     analytics platform is Google Analytics - and it's free. Out
     of the box, Google Analytics will tell you where visitors
     are coming from (including what search engines and
     keywords), what pages bring in the most users, what
     keywords have the lowest bounce rates (the measure of users
     who immediately leave your site after viewing one page),
     what keywords drive the most pages per visit and average
     time on site and a lot more. With basic conversion tracking
     you can even tie keywords to conversion rates - an
     incredibly valuable way to identify the most valuable
     keywords and focus on them. Bottom line: with web analytics
     you can identify the dead wood in your campaign and focus
     on better opportunities to optimize your marketing budget
     in real time.

How should you approach SEO?

If you're considering investing in SEO as a marketing channel
there are two basic options:

  1. Take the SEO work on in-house
  2. Hire an agency or consultant and outsource SEO

The In-House Option

Hiring for an in-house SEO position is often out of the budget
range for small businesses - in this economic climate
especially. Existing employees, on the other hand, can play an
important role - especially those who are already regularly
updating your website. It requires careful research, planning
and execution, but with the right training and guidance much of
the work required can be handled in-house.

There are also some simple things you can be doing in-house to
improve your SEO.

  * That company you partner with - do they have a website?
    If so, consider asking them to link to you (after you link
    to them). Links are a powerful way to improve your search
    engine rankings.

  * That trade organization you belong to - do they have a
    directory on their website where they list and link to
    members? That could be the source of a quick and easy link.

  * Thinking about starting a blog? It's a great way to
    build content on your site and bring in attention and
    links - just keep in mind you've got to be serious about
    it and actually post regularly.

Search engines are very complex, but in the end the websites
they reward with high rankings are those that get the simple
things right: they feature interesting content on a regular
basis, they stick around with the same domain name and with the
same topic for years and they build links over time and from
other relevant and trusted websites.

The Outsourcing Option

Full disclosure: I am biased. I run a search engine marketing
agency. But I hope you'll hear me out anyway.

Hiring an SEO agency to either handle the full scope of work or
to consult on research and strategy and delegate to your web
developer makes sense in many situations. SEO agencies usually
spend a great deal of time researching strategies and tactics
and compiling resources - all of which can help you hit the
ground running with your SEO campaign. But you need to find the
right agency.

Let's be clear: no SEO agency can guarantee you rankings or
growth. If they tell you they can, they're being either
dishonest or foolish, or both. The bottom line is that SEO
experts don't control the search engines. Changes to Google's
algorithm can, and usually do, come unannounced. That is out of
our hands.

This doesn't mean, however, that the burden of risk should fall
entirely on your shoulders. Failure of a campaign shouldn't
mean you lost your investment, the agency "did their best" and
it just didn't work out. Smart agencies recognize that the
best thing they can do is share the risk with the client. How?
Simply: they set specific goals and benchmarks and stick to
them. That may mean they continue working at a discounted rate
if they don't reach a goal. On the other hand, they may offer
to work on a performance-based contract from the start so their
compensation will be linked directly to the return on your
investment. The point is, it should be more of a partnership
than a client/vendor relationship. That is as important now as
it ever has been.

SEO is scalable - you don't have to throw everything and the
kitchen sink into it. Sometimes just taking a few small steps
here and there over time adds up to success. Other times you
need a one-time overhaul of your site, or maybe a long-term
relationship with an expert who can help chart the course. It
will depend on the goals you set for your website and how
realistic they are given the limits of time and resources. But
search engines are going to remain the primary driver of traffic
and sales on the web for the forseeable future. SEO, for that
reason, shouldn't be an afterthought to your marketing plan,
even in tough economic times - indeed, with such a high
potential return on your investment, it should be a priority.
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Mike Tekula is the President and Founder of Unstuck Digital,
Inc., a Long Island SEO company (http://www.unstuckdigital.com/
search-engine-optimization-seo/) that provides clients with
effective and affordable search engine marketing strategies.
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