SEO pays off if you have the right strategy and you work with a partner who knows how to get results. Around 93% of online experiences start with a search engine, and the close rate of SEO leads is much higher than that of traditional marketing. Therefore, SEO provides an impressive return on investment (ROI). To answer the question, yes, SEO is a valuable investment and it's worth it.
You're creating an asset for your company by investing in SEO. If you decide to hire an SEO agency or consultant, ask them if they think SEO will be worth it for you. SEO can provide a technically sound site and well-optimized content, but if there are no other channels that help attract authority and traffic to the site, SEO can take a long time to pay off. That's why it's so important to hire an SEO company that focuses on long-term white hat SEO practices.
If you have a small, one-person store, SEO is still a major investment, but it may make more sense to do SEO on your own than hiring an agency to handle it for you. In fact, we've found that SEO and PPC efforts tend to work better together, as SEO attracts visitors through unbranded searches and guides them through the marketing funnel. It's been years since someone can just hire an SEO agency and “do the SEO thing and get results without any internal effort.” You might think that the importance of organic search engine traffic would make investing in SEO a no-brainer, but marketers and business owners are often very concerned about incorporating SEO into their overall strategy. While no SEO strategy can claim to be algorithm-proof, SEO providers who follow best practices should ensure that their customers' traffic and rankings are kept up to date regardless of algorithm updates.
As mentioned above, if you hire the wrong SEO company (for example, a black hat SEO agency) and it classifies your website with prohibited tactics, Google could sanction your website with a penalty and lose all your rankings. And while this can certainly slow down your SEO efforts, the good news is that SEO isn't just content. A redesign is an excellent opportunity to invest in your ongoing visibility by preserving existing SEO elements that generate traffic and creating an SEO strategy that leads to long-term success.
