Common objections to SEO (and how I answer them)

SEO

There are plenty of reasons that businesses don’t seek out SEO services. 

Sometimes, it is that they genuinely don’t know that SEO is a thing. They just presume that search engines automatically “know” what websites are out there. 

But there are lots of other objections to SEO that I come across from time to time from those who do know what SEO is, but just don’t see its value.  

I thought I’d tackle them head-on. 

I’ve included a brief explanation of what SEO is and why it’s so important first, in case you’re not familiar with it. If you already understand this, you can skip down to the list of objections to SEO!

What is SEO? 

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. The aim of SEO is to make your website more visible to the users that you want in the search engine results pages. There are three main areas of SEO:

• Onsite (this encompasses all activities that happen on your website)
• Offsite (this encompasses all activities that happen off your website)
• Technical (this encompasses all technical improvements you make to your website to make it more visible)

Why is SEO so important?

Without SEO your website might not be visible online. This is a huge problem, as one of the key reasons a business normally has a website built is to showcase their products/services so that they can generate new leads/sales. If users can’t find your website, then you can’t convert them into customers. 

Although modern search engines do a lot of work to discover new websites that are made as part of their general operational procedures, if your website is not “saying the right things” to them, or sending the right signals, search engines can easily misinterpret what your website is about. 

I mean, search engines are clever, but they’re not omniscient. 

Search engines send out “bots” that crawl the internet looking for new websites. Once found, they crawl the pages of the website to discover what the website is about. They use information called “metadata” to do this, and also look at the URL titles, website copy and other information to get a bigger picture of what your website is about.

If your website doesn’t have many pages, has very little website copy and has no metadata, a search engine will really struggle to understand what your business does. Then, it won’t be able to point the right people your way, and you can lose out on loads of business as a result.  

What are some of the objections to SEO?

Here is a list of some of the main ones, and what I tend to say in response. 

I do Google Ads and get plenty of business, I don’t need any SEO

But what about if your money runs out?

Human nature is such that we tend to presume that things will continue as they always have, but as recent history has shown, the economy can change overnight. 

As soon as the ad spend stops, all your traffic disappears, and with that, your website enquiries. 

SEO ensures that your website will continue to rank well and be visible online if you can’t afford PPC. Unlike PPC, SEO doesn’t “stop” when you stop paying for it. Once your website is optimised well, it can generate income even if you do no other content marketing as part of an SEO campaign. 

Plus, lots of users deliberately don’t click on ads. 

They know that they’re paid, and so may be less likely to deliver the best results. There are also a lot of people who don’t like being told what to do and won’t click on principle. 

(I am one of those people! I deliberately refuse to click on any ads out of choice.)

Ads get far fewer click-throughs than organic results. Some research shows that whilst the top ad gets a click-through rate of around 2.1%, the top organic result on the same page gets a whopping 39.8% click-through rate. 

Also, if you’re already making money via PPC, how much more could you make if you did get your website optimised?!

Having multiple channels through which you generate enquiries is just good common sense. Relying on one channel, such as PPC, does not future-proof your business against events that affect our economy.   

I’m a local business, so I don’t need to rank nationally online

Unless they walk past your shop or premises, it will be hard for local people to discover your business without SEO. 

Local SEO is the term used to describe all the activities that help search engines understand where your business is and what you sell so that they can point prospective customers in your direction. 

Local SEO requires onsite and offsite SEO, but mostly it requires careful optimisation of your Business Profile on all major search engines. 

Business Profiles help search engines understand where your business is based physically so that when users type in keywords such as “[your service] near me”, they will be able to find your business, its location and its website. 

SEO will also help your business rank higher in the Map Pack.

That’s the bit of the result pages that lists businesses in the local area next to a local map. Here’s what it looks like:

It’s also known as the 3-Pack, Local Pack and even the Snack Pack.

Users tend to click on the top results, so investing in an SEO campaign can help you rank higher in these local results. 

If you’re a business that only wants to operate in a local or smaller regional area, your onsite SEO can also be optimised to facilitate this. All website metadata would include regional keywords to denote the business’s physical location. 

Any traffic that lands on informational blog posts would improve the website’s rank for local searches. You’re “using” national traffic to support your local campaign, not aiming to promote the website nationally. There’s a distinction.  

I don’t think our website’s main purpose is to generate new business.

Your website is an important part of your sales funnel (even if you don’t realise this). If I’m looking for a particular service, I don’t tend to walk into the closest one I see. I search for a couple online.  Once I find a few, I browse their websites until I find one I fancy trying. 

This process is known as a “customer journey”, and your website has been important in helping throughout this journey. It’s helped me to discover your brand, understand what you do, consider whether you’re suitable and then explain how I contact you.  

The process from prospect to customer started with discovering you via your website… and without SEO, this wouldn’t have been possible. SEO is the way you help search engines understand what your business does. It is also the way you can help your website rank higher on search so that more prospective customers will discover your brand. 

Even if you don’t get a true “sale” from your website (e.g. it’s not an eCommerce website), it is pivotal for building awareness of your brand to new leads, and as such needs to be optimised well. 

I’ve not seen results from SEO before.

How long did you invest in SEO?

SEO is not a “quick win” marketing strategy.

The benefits are huge, but they can take a long time to materialise. 

There could be other reasons that your previous strategy failed. 

Maybe the real problem wasn’t diagnosed at the start of the campaign.

Did the SEO specialist you worked with conduct an SEO audit at the start? This should be the default for any SEO specialist or agency. 

Alternatively, it could be they didn’t approach the campaign with the best strategy.

When conducting SEO, certain things should be done in every situation (such as keyword research), but every project has unique requirements and as such requires a unique strategy. 

As such, SEO specialists will employ different tactics to see where they can make ground. There is a degree of trial and error that comes with SEO. It might be that the specialist you worked with just didn’t land upon the optimal strategy. Or, the competitor’s landscape changed, making results harder to come by. 

Getting a “pair of fresh eyes” on the project might yield better results. 

It could also be that you felt you didn’t get good results because the results you did achieve weren’t reported to you. 

This is a particular bugbear of mine. 

So many business owners I meet have worked with SEO agencies in the past who have simply not bothered to report on their progress, and the businesses involved had no idea that they should expect a report. 

Every campaign should follow a rhythm that allows for regular reporting, reflection and revision of strategy. 

This is what a good quality SEO campaign process should look like:

You can see that it allows for continual feedback, revision and improvement. I prefer to call it a “rhythm”, as this allows us to understand that sometimes we need to flex and change when the need arrives.

Make sure that your SEO agency is following a process like this to get the best results possible. 

It’s too expensive.

What is one enquiry worth to you?

Although it takes time to get going and done well, SEO can have a compounding effect, and you can get out a lot more than you put in. The effects can last a long time too. 

Research suggests that ranking number 1 typically generates a click-through rate of 39.8%. That’s more than double the rate for the second position, 18.7%, and nearly four times that for 3rd position, 10.2%.

Imagine you were at number 1 for a search term with a high volume of traffic every month. You’d be getting a click-through rate of 39.8% for that keyword. You’d be winning over a third of all the potential leads for that search term. 

You’ve got to think about the potential and consider, if just one of those leads converted into a sale, what would it be worth? 

Calculate how much one enquiry is worth and that will help you determine whether the cost is too expensive. 

Cost also depends on the type of agency that you employ. 

We’ve made the deliberate choice to be a fully remote agency, as we believe that our clients’ hard-earned cash should be spent on the work, not a fancy office with a ping-pong table. 

SEO: long-term investment, huge reward

Despite these objections, with the right strategy and approach, the benefits of SEO far outweigh the challenges. It often requires a shift in perspective, seeing SEO as a fundamental component of a holistic online marketing strategy rather than a quick fix or standalone effort. But done right, SEO can supercharge your business growth.