So... Why Invest In SEO?

MICHAEL:
Hi guys, Michael here. Do you want a second opinion on your SEO? Head to theseoshow.co and hit the link in the header. We'll take a look under the hood at your SEO, your competitors and your market and tell you how you can improve. All right, let's get into the show.

INTRO: It's time for the SEO show where a couple of nerds talk search engine optimization so you can learn to compete in Google and grow your business online. Now, here's your hosts, Michael and Arthur.

MICHAEL: Welcome to another episode of the SEO show. I am here with Arthur again for another week talking SEO. How are you going?

ARTHUR: Hello, Michael. I'm good. Good. I am doing okay. You don't sound excited. All things considered, we're in lockdown. It's not the most exciting time at the moment, but we'll push through it.

MICHAEL: You know what I'm finding at the moment sitting in my office that I'm smashing through way more work than I actually get done in the office.

ARTHUR: Well, you have a much, much better setup than I do.

MICHAEL: Yeah, no, but like just being away from distractions and the like, you know.

ARTHUR: Yeah, I'm a bit different. I like being around the team, being in the office. I work better in that environment. So fingers crossed that we're not in lockdown for much longer.

MICHAEL: Yeah. Look, I'm using it as like a three week period to smash out a ton of work. It's been okay. All things considered. But anyway, we're not here to talk lockdowns. We're here to talk SEO. It's that time of week. And look, we've been through all of the pillars. We've been through how Google works. We've covered off, you know, I guess a real intro side of things to SEO. So after five episodes, you probably have a pretty good understanding of how it works. So this week we're going to ask a pretty simple question. Why invest in SEO? Why invest the time? Why invest the money? What can you expect back in return? So does that all sound pretty good? You ready to get stuck into that?

ARTHUR: Ready as I'll ever be.

MICHAEL: You sound pretty depressed today.

ARTHUR: I'm not depressed. I'm fine. I'm fine.

MICHAEL: Yeah. Okay. All right. So just suck yourself up here.

ARTHUR: It's been a hectic week. Okay. All right. Well, you know, let's, let's get into it. Let's talk. Why, why invest in SEO?

MICHAEL: And we have about nine points that we're going to move through here. So the first one is pretty obvious. People turn to Google when they're looking for products and services. You do that, don't you?

ARTHUR: I do for a living.

MICHAEL: No, but I'd do that too if I need anything.

ARTHUR: Naturally, everyone will go to Google and search for products, services, or whatever they need.

MICHAEL: And it's not just naturally, it's not just anecdotal. According to Statista, Google has about 90% share of the market in Australia. According to Moz, 85% of people search Google three times a day or more. 84% of people will look for services on Google. I've done my research. You have. So look, we're not really saying anything groundbreaking here, right? People use the hell out of Google to find stuff. So you want to be on Google and you can be on ads. You can be there via SEO. But here's where it gets interesting point too. The majority of the clicks on Google still go to organic results. Do you agree with that? Yeah. I'd agree with that. Good. Good. Because Google are trying to stop that. You know, they're very hard. Yeah. They make the ads. You know, remember when the ads used to have yellow around them, like the whole thing had a yellow background and they got rid of that. And that used to have green ad label.

ARTHUR: It's evolved a lot over the last 10 years.

MICHAEL: Yeah. Or devolved. So look, Google are trying to make the ads blend into organic results so that more people click the ads. You know, that makes sense. They want to make money. They want to boost their share price. But the people that skip the ads are still in the majority. You know, we as an agency, we run Google ads. You can get a lot of traffic. They're good. But if you really want to drive a ton of traffic and do it profitably, then SEO is your best bet because the bulk of the clicks are still going there. Now Brian Dean at Backlinko said about 75% of clicks go to the top organic listings. I've seen other studies saying, you know, anywhere from 60 to 75% of clicks still go to organic results. You've done your homework. I have. I've done a little bit of prep work this week. I like throwing out my stats, my percents, but anyway, people are using the organic results most of the time. So if you have a presence there, you're going to get traffic.

ARTHUR: Do you feel that is because they trust the organic results more than they do the paid results?

MICHAEL: Yeah, I think so. Cause it was sort of, that's always been the case in the past. Ads maybe in the past weren't as good as they are now in terms of landing pages and ad copy and all that. So maybe it's a bit of a carryover from that. Yeah. People also know that with SEO, you're not paying Google to be there, you know, it's Google's deciding what's the best. So they inherently think, Oh, I'm going to go down here and click on the best ones. But the other point I wanted to make around this is that people, you know, don't really go past the first page of Google. Do you never, I never do it.

ARTHUR: You know what I do maybe when I'm looking for specific keywords or rankings, but never naturally I've never actually gone past page one.

MICHAEL: If you're actually looking for a product or service, you're clicking a few ads, you're clicking a few organic results, you're getting in touch with the ones that look good. SEO nerds like us might be clicking all those little O's at the bottom of the page and going into the deeper ones, but really more than 90% of people don't make it past that first page. So from a business point of view, what does that mean for you? You want to be on the first page. You need to invest in SEO to get there. The other really good thing about SEO and why you should invest in it as opposed to other channels like radio, TV, print, you know, offline ads is that SEO is measurable. You can use analytics, you can track things, you can see directly how much traffic, how many leads you're getting as a result of your SEO investment. With radio, you put up some ads and you get told that there's some impressions of reach, but do you know how many sales you're getting? You know, sometimes if you,

ARTHUR: There are some examples in the past where we've had clients that have run radio ads or not ex-clients that have run a radio ads on even bigger like networks like Kiss where we had analytics and we didn't see any traffic or no increase in traffic. So it was a waste of money, isn't it?

MICHAEL: Yeah. Like we, we use analytics to track all the traffic coming from the digital channels and then immediately after the ad runs, there's no on, on radio, no traffic to the site. Not good, is it? No, not at all. You could just go blow that money running reach and impressions on Facebook and at least track it and see what's going on. Anyway, not here to trash radio. We're just here to say that, uh, well we sort of are, I guess, you know, we think SEO is a better investment and you can track things and see what's going on and know where your spend's going. The other big one with SEO for me is that once you're there, once you're ranking on the, on the top of the first page, your cost per acquisition. So, you know, the cost per lead or the cost per sale is going to be much lower and your return on investment is going to be much higher than pretty much every other channel. Because with SEO, you're not paying per click like you are on Google ads. You're not paying per impression like you are on Facebook ads. this means when it's your ranking, you can drive as much traffic as possible. You're only limited by the amount of times that keyboard search, right?

ARTHUR: Yeah. I love the analogy. SEO is like buying a house. Whereas Google ads is like renting a house. Exactly.

MICHAEL: It is a good analogy. And the other, the other thing, you know what, I've actually got a little, the very next point we're going to make, we can go into that a bit deeper, but on this one with SEO, the good thing, you know, is that your investment often will remain static while your traffic and results increase. So let's say for example, you're investing $5,000 a month in your SEO campaign. You've been doing that for 12 months. But by the end of your 12 months, your traffic has, you know, tripled or quadrupled to use a cheesy marketing agency slogan. We'll double or triple or quadruple your traffic, 10X your traffic. But anyway, that general point is kind of right. You know, like if you're investing five grand a month for 12 months, your traffic triples or quadruples, but your investment, monthly investment remains the same. That means your return on that investment is just getting better and better and better. Yeah. So that is the real beauty of SEO. It does take a lot of investment upfront. It takes a bit of time. Time is very important. Super important. You've got to be in the game for long enough to reap the rewards, but the rewards do come once you get those rankings.

ARTHUR: I think a lot of people would get scared because they don't see the initial quick results that they do with Google ads. So someone can create a campaign, launch it in a day, send traffic to a landing page and start seeing leads, which is great. It serves a purpose. But with SEO people have a hard time understanding that they are investing longterm and the results come not in a day, not in a week, sometimes in three, six, even 12 months. So that's very important to kind of Make it clear to the client. Yeah.

MICHAEL: And it is, I guess, tough to invest and see nothing for it. Of course I can completely understand it. But you've got to understand the process and the outcome that you're going for. And ideally SEO should be part of a marketing mix, right? You have your SEO, but you are running Google ads because it's immediate and you are running Facebook ads because you can target people that aren't necessarily searching there and then, but are interested. Yeah. So it all needs to play its part, but SEO, yeah, as, as we've covered many times already, it does take time. But on this point, the upside, lower CPA, stronger ROI, SEO is your channel for that.

ARTHUR: And when the results start coming, they're great.

MICHAEL: Oh yeah. So coming back to the point you just made before about renting traffic versus owning traffic. Uh, let's go into that a little bit further. Let's expand on that because you know, I think, you know, we started off talking about the lockdowns we're in at the moment. This is a good point because the people that kept investing in their SEO during the lockdown a year ago and the people that are continuing to invest in it now are the ones that are reaping the rewards because with SEO, it's a channel you own. You're not renting that traffic from big tech companies like Google and Facebook. Now with Google and Facebook, if you run the ads, that's awesome. You get traffic, you get leads, but the minute you turn the ads off, the minute you reduce your budget, your traffic drops, your leads and your sales drop. with SEO, if you invest in content, you invest in links. Now that's an asset that you're building up for the longterm that you will own in the future, regardless of whether you stop investing in SEO or not. Right. Yup. And, um, it will benefit you for years to come. So we advocate investing in SEO because it's, it's, yeah, it's, it's your own channel. You own it. Anything you want to add to that one at all?

ARTHUR: I'm just trying to think of any examples over the past year of clients that have continued doing SEO versus the ones that had stopped.

MICHAEL: I can't think of any if that, if I, what about, okay, so we've got some online, online retail clients that sell products to, I don't want to give away the name. It's just an online retailer, right? Yeah. They kept investing through the initial COVID downturn. And funnily enough, like they, as most e-commerce businesses did, sales went through the roof and they continued to invest during that time. Whereas we had other clients that stopped immediately. I think I know what you're talking about. Yeah. We had other clients that stopped immediately freaked out and they came back to it months later, but they're behind the eight ball because the other businesses that kept investing in it have continued to grow their link profile, continued to grow their content. Yeah. And, um, you know, uh, further ahead. So that's just a gap that has to be, um, closed now.

ARTHUR: Yeah. It was just the benefit of not having that competition investing at the time, giving the opportunity to get one step ahead or multiple steps ahead.

MICHAEL: The other, I do have another little point on this topic as well. Um, some businesses like to spend as much money as possible at the end of a financial year, you know, just to incur those expenses in that financial year and not have to pay tax on, on whatever they've, they've spent there. So with Google ads or social ads, you could just plow that into the media. And it's sort of like a sugar hit where there, and then you'll get a few leads, but they disappear. Whereas if you plowed that into extra content or more link building for your website, that is that investment reaps rewards for years to come. So there you go. That's a good point. That's a great point. So basically, um, yeah, you want to own your traffic sources as much as possible. SEO helps you do that. Another point here, point seven is that SEO, when you rank high in SEO, just brings credibility to your brand. Yeah. If people are seeing you there at the top, they think, well, you know, they're trustworthy. Google rates them. They're an established business. Obviously I'm going to click through to the first few that are there and not bother with the rest. It also helps with search engine real estate. You know, if you're running Google ads, you've got the ad listing. If you're in the top of SEO, you've got the SEO listing, getting multiple bites at the, uh, at the pie to try and get that, that click through to your site. Right.

ARTHUR: Yeah. It looks good. It looks good. When someone's searching and sees your brand all over the search results, it is a massive trust symbol.

MICHAEL: Cool. It's not too much more to say on that one. It is what it is. The next point though, I think is a pretty cool one. Although it is a little bit murky in this day and age with the recent updates Apple have made to their privacy settings, but SEO really improves the effectiveness of retargeting. So with retargeting, that's basically where you track the people that have come to your site. Then you show them ads on Facebook or you show them ads on Google, Google's display network after they've left the site. The reason SEO is good for this is because, you know, you can be driving a lot of traffic to your site by SEO. And if that traffic doesn't convert when they land on your site and they disappear, you can at least follow them around with ads and try and get them back the second, third, fourth time. So retargeting is really effective when the audiences are big. You know, there's a lot of people in your audience to show ads to so that you don't fatigue them. You don't show the same ad to the same people over and over again. So SEO can fill those retargeting audiences up and do it free of charge. You're not having to pay for it with ad traffic. So that's still true. You know, Google, I touched on, not Google, Apple made changes to their operating system recently to not track users as much on their devices. So retargeting is going to be hurt a little bit by that, but be that as it may, it's still an effective strategy to try and drive retargeting audiences, you know, on Android and other devices. And there are ways of getting around it, but that's, you know, a paid ad side of things. We're not here to talk about that. We're here to talk about why invest in SEO. Let's move on to point nine. It creates a gap between you and your competitors. What do you reckon about that? If your competitors are not investing and you are.

ARTHUR: you have a massive advantage. Absolutely. Yeah. It's, yeah, it's interesting because I feel like most industries that people are investing in SEO, but there are those niche industries where you can really, really jump ahead. We're working with a finance client where very low volume keywords, but no one else is doing SEO. And now they're ranking at the top for basically all the, all the search terms that they wanted. It didn't take long to get them there and they're reaping the rewards.

MICHAEL: And right, so coming back to this point, why invest? They now have a jump on- A massive jump. All of their competitors. And then any new entrants that come into the market in the future, they have to try and close the gap between them and this competitor. So, you know, investing in it, it's sort of like building a moat in a way, you know. Castles, I'm watching Game of Thrones again at the moment, so. Oh, really? Yeah.

ARTHUR: I still need to get onto that. You haven't watched any? No. You know this.

MICHAEL: Oh, Jesus. I did know that. Yeah. Well, this is probably my fourth watch through, but anyway, there was a moat in it last night. And with SEO, if you invest in it, you're essentially building a moat around your business, your website, that makes it harder for competitors to compete with you.

ARTHUR: It reminds me of a quote from Pumping Iron. I'm probably going to get it wrong, but it was Arnie talking to Lou Ferrigno. And basically he was saying, no matter how much you work out, I'm always going to be that little bit bigger than you. If you keep working out, I'm going to keep working out. I'm always going to be bigger than you. So having that gap between you and your competition, if you start investing in SEO before they do, you're always going to have that gap.

MICHAEL: As long as you keep investing. That's a pretty good analogy. I have to start using that one. Yeah. I like it. Yeah. But really look, um, these are the main reasons why you'd invest in SEO, right? Like there's nine there. It is what it is. It all, it all makes sense to me. Um, is there anything else there that you wanted to add to that or sort of could throw in the mix for reasons why people would want to invest in SEO?

ARTHUR: Not to add, but just to, I guess, kind of touch on again, that it is a long-term investment and it does work really well. So as long as people understand that, it's an amazing channel to invest in.

MICHAEL: Hmm. And I think we might even do an episode in future and we're going to do one about dodgy sort of SEO salesmen and the fake promises they make.

ARTHUR: Oh, like getting 30 keywords into position one in a week or something.

MICHAEL: Yeah. So we're going to cover off all that stuff, but we might even do an episode about unrealistic things from the client side, you know, sort of expectations, timeframes, and pitfalls that people commonly fall into stopping too soon, expecting results too quickly. Just to really delve into that a bit more, because there's definitely dodgy stuff going on from SEO salespeople, but if clients have the right expectations and the right timeframes in mind with their investment, the results will normally come if they're working with a good agency. But anyway, that pretty much does it for explaining why you should invest in SEO. But I thought maybe to wrap things up, we can just recap on those nine points for people that might skip to the end and just want a summary. So yeah, nine points. Why should people invest in SEO?

ARTHUR: Sure. So starting with the point one, basically everyone goes on Google to start their search for products, for services, for anything. Very important to be there organically. Uh, the second point is majority of the people will ignore the ads and we'll go straight to the organic listings.

MICHAEL: Yeah. The only people clicking past. Oh, sorry. No, that's yep. Yep. I getcha.

ARTHUR: So leading into 0.3, 95% of Google users will not go past the first page.

MICHAEL: And that's what I was going to say. The only people going past the first page are SEO nerds like you and me.

ARTHUR: Exactly. Point four, it's measurable. So unlike, you know, print media, radio, you have data, you can make decisions based on data. It's, yeah, measurable.

MICHAEL: You're not just throwing money and hoping that it worked, but not knowing. Exactly.

ARTHUR: Yeah. Point five, lower CPA and stronger ROI in the longterm. Point six, you're investing in a channel of your own rather than renting traffic. So going back to the analogy of building your own house versus renting a house. 0.7, credibility and search engine real estate. So dominating the search results with your ads and organic. 0.8, it improves effectiveness of retargeting. And then 0.9, it creates a gap between you and your competitors who are not investing in SEO.

MICHAEL: So that's pretty much it. And I guess ultimately the thing tying all of that together, why should you invest in SEO? It helps you grow your business, get more customers, more sales leads, you know, all that good stuff. So that's the stuff you really care about. Yeah. Hope you've enjoyed this episode. Next week we are going to be talking about dodgy SEO, the wild west, black hat, you know, penalties, all that sort of stuff. Just to explain that, you know, it's not all roses in SEO, you know, you can invest in it and you can do, you know, a good investment or a bad investment. And there is a big difference between the two. So we're going to talk about that next week.

ARTHUR: I'm excited about that.

MICHAEL: Yeah. Yeah. You like, you like the dodgy.

ARTHUR: It's interesting to talk about. I think, I think people will find this one interesting.

MICHAEL: Yeah, I hope so. I hope so. And look, if you do find this stuff interesting, we'd love a follow. We'd love a subscribe. We'd love a review. All that sort of stuff that you can do is going to help us get this into the ears of more business owners and help them learn SEO. So appreciate you guys listening and we'll see you next week. Bye bye. Bye.

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