Most marketers would give you a definitive “YES!” as the answer to this question, but it is much more nuanced than it sounds on the surface. As a digital marketing agency, SEO is what we’re best known for at Sagapixel. We’ve seen SEO work for our clients, but we’ve also seen it not work.
What do we mean by this? In this article, we’ll discuss the scenarios in which SEO works and those that don’t, so you can make informed decisions about investing in marketing resources for your business.
If you’d like to learn more about whether SEO would work for your business, schedule a call with Sagapixel today. If SEO is the right fit for your business, our digital marketing specialists will create a targeted SEO strategy to get you seen and drive leads for your company.
What Is The Goal of SEO?
Before we dive into whether or not SEO is an effective digital marketing strategy, we need to talk about the ultimate goal of SEO. For the most part, SEO means that your target customer will be able to find your brand when searching for the things you offer or sell – whether it’s on Google, YouTube, Reddit, Quora, TikTok, or even LLMs like ChatGPT.
If your question is, “Can an SEO company get you found on all these search engines?” the answer is almost always yes, assuming you’re working with a good one. However, whether or not it will convert into business and leads is another discussion.
How To Determine If SEO is Worth Investing In For Your Business
To determine if SEO is a worthwhile investment for your business, ask yourself: Is your target customer searching for your services? If the answer is yes (which it probably is), then SEO may be worth investing in.
Is your target customer researching the problems that you solve on Google, Bing, YouTube, or other search engines? If the answer is yes, SEO-driven content marketing might also help you.
But, if your target audience is not looking for what you do and is not researching their problems online, then SEO will not work for you.
Here’s an example: A local gas station will probably not sell a lot more gas just because it ranks number one on Google for “gas station near me.” Most people don’t use Google to find a gas station.
Likewise, an HR recruiting firm that targets Fortune 500 companies is probably not going to get many of those companies Googling their services. That’s likely not the best channel for them. However, in industries where users rely on informative content and search engines to guide their decisions, like healthcare, legal services, or home improvement, SEO becomes a powerful channel. In these cases, potential clients are actively looking for solutions, reading blog posts, comparing providers, and researching their options online.
While SEO content marketing with video or blog content might work, it would be a long-term strategy.
Will Your Content Drive Leads With SEO?
A good SEO company can get you ranking and drive traffic to your website, but if your content doesn’t do a good job of converting users through trust building, user engagement, and quality content, it’s not going to work when it comes to driving leads.
Let’s say that your target customer is Googling the services you provide. They’re researching their problems online, and you have a great website with compelling content. How long will it take to see results?
How Long Does SEO Take to Work?
If you’re a brand-new website or a small business in a local market, you’ll probably see results from SEO after 6 to 12 months – if not sooner.
If you’re an established website that’s been around for a while, we’ve had cases where we’ve seen results within a week or two of starting SEO work, particularly when technical improvements were made to their website.
The truth is that it depends on several different factors. Typically, I expect to see real, tangible results from SEO work within 3 to 6 months. If you’re in a competitive market, it may take longer to see results, particularly if you’re not dedicating many resources to SEO.
How Can You Tell If SEO Is Working?
No matter which SEO company you’re working with, they should be adding new pages to your website or editing existing pages. If they’re adding new pages, you should check whether those pages are being indexed by Google.
If they’re editing existing pages, you should see a fairly quick change in the search rank of these pages—within a few weeks, if not days, of Google recrawling them.
With brand new pages, you should choose target keywords to track the overall search rank of the pages. Our SEO team refers to these as “head terms,” or the target keywords you want to rank for. Over about 90 days, track what kind of movement you see with your search rank for those keywords.
Simultaneously, you should be tracking the overall organic traffic to your website. Keep an eye out for blog content– you may have some legacy blog content that’s never going to drive a lead for you, but drives a lot of unqualified informational traffic. Your traffic may be going down or going up from these blogs that don’t matter to begin with.
This can muddy the water when measuring the progress you’re making with SEO. Isolate any sort of non-priority or low-priority pages from your data, and focus on service pages and articles that have very high purchase intent.
Improve Your Business’ SEO Strategy with Sagapixel
If you’d like to improve your business’s SEO strategy, Sagapixel can help. Our SEO specialists and digital marketing associates will identify target keywords and create a targeted SEO strategy to drive leads for your company.
Schedule a call with Sagapixel today and invest in the future of your business with effective SEO.
