Making It To Page 1: Worth The SEO Expense?
The one thing every website owner wonders about (typically after their site is up rather than before) is how to get more traffic to their site. Should they pay for print advertising, buy some air time for a local radio commercial or perhaps hire an SEO services company to help them gain high rankings on the search engines? With a little bit of research most will choose the SEO route simply because it’s the most economical. For most new website’s this is probably the correct decision but just be aware that SEO is not without it’s caveats and misconceptions. It’s a great choice for most website owners (and for some, the only choice) but as with anything else you need to do your research and understand what you can realistically expect as far as the results for an SEO campaign.
SEO is a great way to advertise any website these days and over the long run, even taking into consideration all the time, effort and in some cases money invested, it’s still the cheapest route to take and potentially the route with the greatest return. That being said, SEO is not without it’s quirks. One should fully familiarize themselves with the pitfalls that lay ahead when starting a campaign such as this. Afterall, you’ll either be giving up a lot of your time or your money and there are some important facts that you’ll need to learn about before setting your expectations too high at first.
Yes, it’s true that over a long period of time it’s cheaper to hire an SEO services company than it is to maintain newspaper ads and most other paid for media advertising. It’s also true that first page listings on some of the more popular search engines can bring you lots of free traffic. What isn’t always true in some cases is the hype surrounding the idea that a single 1st page listing on a search engine will instantly bring hoards of excited shoppers to your website making you an overnight success. This in most cases couldn’t be farther from the truth. So how much traffic will you get and will it all have been worth it?
The amount of traffic you can expect to receive directly from a 1st page listing is directly related to a few factors. The popularity of the key phrase you’ve been listed for probably has the most impact in this regard. Page position and your listings description will also play a role. Your description should be worded in such a way that it will attract the type of customer or market that you are targeting. You need to describe exactly what they are looking for and if you do that well then you will be rewarded with a higher amount of clicks.
All too often I receive phone calls from people seeking my help because they are ranked number 1 for a poor key phrase and can’t understand why they aren’t seeing any traffic. They simply haven’t done the research that would have shown a poor level of inquiries for the term they hap hazardously decided on. Another mistake I see being made quite often is that folks tend to narrow their marketing efforts to the search engines only instead of spreading out their efforts on a broader scale.
While the opportunities for big pay-offs with 1st page listings are certainly there, in order to make it really happen you’re going to need to be listed for the correct phrases, the most popular phrases. This will take a lot of patience and time (and probably the help of an SEO services company) because these high traffic terms are typically the most competitive as well. The best thing to do if you are first starting out is to begin optimizing for the less popular phrases at first as you will be able to get listed sooner and smaller amounts of traffic getting to your website right away is better than waiting months on end for a big pay-off. Earning a first page listing for the right key words can do wonders for your traffic but you need to put it all into proper perspective and get an accurate understanding of what sort of numbers to expect before spending all your money or time trying to get there.
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