That was the most valuable advice I’ve ever received from anyone in this profession.
The purpose of what we do is to increase ROI, that’s our goal, and so much of being a good SEO is just just common sense, but that doesn’t mean it’s obvious. The experience of dealing with clients along the years has demonstrated how common sense is not so common, especially in a market of self proclaimed experts, gurus, so called internet millionaires and many other types of snake oil sellers preying on potential clients’ urgent needs, lack of knowledge and misconceptions.
Don’t start building a house by its roof.
You may already know the 3 pillars of SEO: technical issues, content optimization and link building. Social media could be considered the fourth one lately and who knows the new ones to come in the near future.
“Why are you not including link building and social media in the SEO strategy you are drafting for my web site?”
That’s a question we hear a lot when making proposals.
The first task to accomplish while working in any strategy is evaluate the SEO status of the site or sites involved. It is hard to believe how many of those have not covered the basics, specially painful when they have been paying someone else to work on it previously.
“Ok, ok, but I’ve heard that link building is super-important and social media so cool that we don’t care about technical SEO or content optimization.”
Don’t start building a house by its roof.
Yes, we can offer those services and more. Our goal as agency is being two steps ahead of the standard market strategies, but often you are not ready for them and here it is where the ROI story enters stage so let me quantify a bit.
Think of the ROI
Generally, the two first pillars can double your traffic in 9 to 12 months and raise your conversions more than double if you focus in quality traffic instead of pure quantity. Working on them is a complete in-house thing and the yield of the resources invested (and the ROI) is high.
It is true that link building is a highly important aspect of any SEO strategy but it is more an ongoing practice compared with technical and content issues. It is about getting links from third parties, and since you have no control at all over them, it’s a lot more work for less gain, and naturally, the ROI is lower.
Doubling your traffic and conversions doing only link building is not impossible but much more expensive for sure.
Social media, while good for branding and customer engagement, is quite similar to link building, and its benefits from SEO point of view are even lower and indirect.
Common sense, first, and web analytics, second tell us that people are not going to want to link to, or being engaged in social media networks with, websites that have poorly organized and optimized content and serious technical issues.
Seriously, before going ahead with more advance strategies make sure your SEO house is perfectly clean and tidy. Everything will perform much better so your money will be better invested.
Does it make more sense now?
