When Should You Consult an SEO

The internet is filled with billions of websites all competiting for their share of traffic. Each site has its promotional mix and finds value in specific channels; some live off social media; others prefer paid search marketing; some may be pros with email marketing or programmatic ad buying. There isn't one way to build a successful source of traffic, and every online business will find their channel mix, which is why some businesses choose to ignore SEO.

The reality is that organic search is seen as a slow meandering shot in the dark with no guarantee of success or any returns in the near future, which encourages businesses to opt for channels that they feel they have more control over. While SEO might not be your focus channel you should still ensure you keep an eye on it and allow it to trickle through visitors without much trouble, it's a free source of traffic for the lifetime of your business.  

Committing to SEO isn't easy and many do give up along the way, but there are certain cases, you may want to consult an SEO to review the health of your site and provide insights. More often than not these insights will not only improve organic traffic but have a knock-on effect in conversion and repeat visits via your performance channels. 

If you're not an organic traffic focussed site, when should you consult an SEO?

1. When your traffic is consistently decreasing

If your performance marketing channels are starting to become too competitive and you're losing impression share, not adding enough subscribers to your database or don't have enough promotional content to drive leads or sales, then it may be time to speak to an SEO about helping you build some additional traffic.

SEO can supplement your current channels and help take the pressure off meeting that specific conversion rate which allows you to double down on key promotions or channels that are your major revenue drivers while SEO brings in more prospective clients into the funnel.

2. When you're planning a re-platform

If you're looking to switch the technology behind your website for performance or pricing considerations and moving to a new CMS or coding a new website from scratch is on the cards, it's best to bring in an SEO to ensure that the website follows all Google's technical best practices.

An SEO will be able to spot errors in how the website renders URLs and pages and advice on on-page refinements that will help your web pages visibility by making webpages friendly for search engines to crawl, understand and of course, index.

3. When you're planning a content strategy

Perhaps you're not interested in all the technical issues plaguing your site and feel you can live without these optimisation tactics, but you do have a blog and plan to create content for readers than having an SEO help you refine a strategy is a good idea. Having to employ or outsource content writers can be an expensive undertaking for some businesses, especially when the content does not perform well, it will often be written off as a failed experiment that doesn't work for your business. 

Having an SEO perform keyword research and create a content strategy for three, six or even twelve months can provide a framework for your content team to work from and hit the target with their blog articles more often than not. It will not only help them with topics but reference the correct keywords searchers are using so you attract targetted traffic with your writer's contributions.

4. When your traffic has been stagnant for too long

If you've built a business around the final stage funnel which is where most websites focus all their energy, you'll find that chasing leads means you target a tiny percentage of the online population. There are more people who do not know your brand or your service than the ones that do, and you cannot reach out to them, the same way you would people who are at the latter stage of the buying cycle. 

Businesses who only target later stage funnel users often plateau and find that they cannot generate any more traffic from their current efforts. In situations like this, an SEO would be an asset to a company as they can bring in fresh insights on how to broaden your funnel through the use of content and the targetting of long-tail keywords as well as latent semantic keywords that you may be ignoring.

5. When you're launching a new site

If you already have a site and would like to launch a new site for a new brand, product, service, promotion or collaboration then you may want to bring in an SEO to make sure that your efforts do not cannibalise your current site. An SEO can also advise on the best technical set up such as using a new domain, subdomain or subfolder to help you get the best out of your campaigns and support your other digital assets with better synergy.

6. When your paid advertising starts to become too costly 

If you're exclusively relying on paid advertising for traffic and you're not the monopoly in the sector you will quickly see your budget evaporate as competitors price you out of the auction or more businesses enter the fray and try to compete for traffic. Paid traffic tends to become costlier over time, and if you're not careful, you can quickly hit a wall, your budget cannot overcome.

Instead of trying to throw money down one avenue, it may be wise to take a step back and look at how building consistent traffic through SEO can help reduce your costs over time and rely less on paid advertising year on year for growth.

Tell us your content marketing story

Have you been frustrated with returns organic search marketing? How have you been using SEO? Share your experiences with us in the comments section down below.

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If you would like us to set up your organic search marketing strategy or want to know more about digital marketing for your business, then don’t be shy we’re happy to assist. Simply contact us

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Recommended reading

If you enjoyed this post and have a little extra time to dive deeper down the rabbit hole, why not check out the following posts on SEO.

• What is an SEO and what types of SEO's are there?
• How To Optimise YouTube Videos For SEO
• Best SEO strategy to move ahead of your competitor in 2019
• Should We Be Making The Case For A Full Stack SEO
• How Your Niche Website Can Benefit From SEO

Tags: SEO, Organic Search