Is SEO Worth It In 2023
Just answer the questions in this flowchart and you’ll know whether search engine optimization will be worth your time, money, and effort. So, start by asking yourself: Are potential customers searching for what I sell or do? If the answer is ‘yes,’ then follow this path. And ding, ding, ding, SEO is worth it. Now, if you answered ‘no’ to that question, then follow this path and ask yourself: Are potential customers searching for solutions to problems that your business helps to solve? If the answer is ‘yes,’ go this way and SEO is worth it. Now, if you answered ‘no’ to both questions, then SEO may not be the best marketing channel to focus on.
But to be sure, let’s dig a bit deeper into the first two questions starting with: Are potential customers searching for what I sell or do? Now, if you own a local business, then statistically speaking, SEO will be worth the effort. According to Google, 4 in 5 consumers use search engines to find local information. 76% of people who search on their smartphones for something nearby, visit a business within a day. And 28% of searches for something nearby actually result in a purchase. So if you’re a restaurant owner, plumber, lawyer, real estate professional, dentist, landscaper or whatever, and you’re not showing up in Google local packs and organic search, then you’re leaving a ton of money on the table.
Now, if you’re not a local service provider like an ecommerce brand or software company, people will most likely be searching for your products unless you’ve created something completely new. So to get an idea of how many people are actually searching for your products and services, you can use a keyword research tool like Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer or Ahrefs’ free Keyword Generator tool. For example, if you have a niche ecommerce store that sells socks for dogs, you can simply search for “dog socks.” And as you can see, there are thousands of monthly searches in the US alone related to socks for dogs. Now, if your product or service isn’t something people are really searching for, then you should ask yourself the second question: Are potential customers searching for solutions to problems that your business helps to solve? Now, many searches in Google are for questions rather than products and services.
After all, if you have a problem, you’ll want to learn how to solve it before actually spending your money. In fact, 53% of shoppers say they always do research before a purchase to ensure they’re making the best possible choice. Let me give you an example of a product that doesn’t get searched for much. Our company has a tool called Content Explorer. It’s a searchable database of of billions of web pages. But no one’s searching for “searchable database of billions of web pages.” However, people are searching for problems the tool helps to solve, such as finding content ideas for your website or finding websites to get backlinks from. Here’s another example. This product is called a flat bastard file and it helps to file metal.
Now, not that many people are actually searching for this product but there are tons of ways you can use it. You can use it to sharpen knives, blades, garden tools, and ice tools to name a few. And from a search in Ahrefs’ keyword generator, you’ll see that nearly 20,000 searches happen in Google every month just for the query, “how to sharpen a knife.” So if your website was able to rank for that keyword, it would be quite simple to actually recommend your flat bastard file in your content. Now, if you want to find more queries where this product could be recommended, you can use Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer and search for something like “sharpen.” Next, go to the Matching terms report and hit the Questions tab to see queries containing the word “sharpen”, phrased as a question. From here, you can cherry-pick topics where you’d be able to recommend your filing product which can lead to more sales. Now, if you’ve found that SEO is worth investing in, you have three
Option #1: you can hire an agency to help. And this will probably be the most expensive option as it costs around $134/hour with a retainer agreement to hire an agency. But, it’s full service.
Option #2: you can build an in-house team or outsource to freelancers or consultants. This too can get quite expensive as the average cost for an SEO consultant is around $122/hour and for freelancers, you’ll spend around $68/hour. But you save money compared to option one, and you have full control of what happens within your organization.
And option #3 is the DIY route. And this is the cheapest way to do SEO but it takes time and skills. Now, if you don’t have a budget, DIY is basically your only option. And even if you do have a budget, I still recommend learning at least the fundamentals of SEO because if you go the agency route, you’ll be able to identify quality work from pure sales people.
Or if you go the in-house/consultant route, you’ll have the knowledge to know whether candidates are qualified to do the work you need done. So what I recommend you do now is to watch our completely free SEO course for beginners which will equip you with all of the skills and knowledge you need to get organic traffic to your site.