Recently I read a comment on UK Business Forums regarding SEO. Someone replied with a post saying (summarised)
I’m very anti SEO as a service that has to be paid for.
Supposing I ran a hotel in London and decided to employ the services of an SEO company or consultant to get me up there in the rankings. And then supposing the other 1246 hotels in London all did the same. There is only one ‘first page’ - so how can I be reasonably assured at the outset I can achieve a decent ranking for my considerable outlay - and even hope to stay there?
When a client engages me the deal is simple - for every £1000 you pay me I’ll deliver £10,000 back or I’ll refund the £1000. You’ll never see that guarantee in SEO because ROI cannot be guaranteed. That’s why I’m anti it.
Granted it is not actually a stupid argument I can see where the person was coming from. The problem is I don’t see how you could not use SEO. Just because you have competition does it mean you just don’t bother? Unfortunately in business if something is profitable you will find competition picks up fast and at the end of the day the as long as the income exceeds expenditure enough then it should be worth it. So basically it is all about the ROI as mentioned but what industry offers a guaranteed ROI? Look at the quote used, if I paid the person £1000 and he delivered 10 fold back or a refund then surely all I would have to do to become a millionaire would just keep giving him money? Or worst case scenario I just get a refund.
If I use a slightly un-realistic over simplified example if I had a street with 10 empty hotels on it and I decided to lease on of them I would probably get it very cheap seeing as there is lots of choice and it would be safe to assume a street with 10 empty hotels is a bit of a shit area. However if I then started to earn a decent wage from it, it would be safe to assume other people would start taking up the hotels until they are all leased. As each hotel is bought up and people realise there is demand for hotels there it is safe to assume the cost to lease will increase, and it would probably increase exponentially if people thought there was enough money to be made. So when all the hotels are leased and my lease comes up again it is very likely that the owner would not want to lease the hotel at the same price, at the end of the day I am making shit loads of money and there is a large demand for the area now so I would have to pay significantly more. These prices would probably continue to increase until the return on investment is not worth it.
It is almost the same with the online market, if you manage to come up with a brilliant niche idea it will hopefully prosper, however other people will see your success and they will try and replicate and better it making it harder for you to profit. The niche will likely become saturated as everyone jumps on the bandwagon and a select few may earn a lot of money others may lose a lot of money.
I am pretty sure no-one can guarantee a return on investment in anything, there are normally to many variables to consider and most ideas/companies are only as good as the weakest link. SEO is a mixed bag of people there are a lot of scammers out there but there are a lot of gems out there that will help maximise your ROI and the good ones should be able show you this from previous clients ROI and statistical ROI figures from the SEO industry as a whole.
From my experience SEO has some of the best ROI out of all the marketing techniques used online however it is largely down to the SEO employed and a realistic investment budget.
