The Importance Of SEO

How important is SEO (search engine optimization) when you are attempting to make an income online? This question was raised at a seminar I attended last weekend and I have to admit that I was not impressed with the answer by the speaker. He said: “If internet marketers relied on free traffic nobody would ever make a cent.”

By now you must have worked out that this guy was attempting to sell a system that relied upon pay per click advertising to drive traffic to a sales page. I’m sure he did not intend to be misleading but his answer was very misleading to around half his audience. I took the trouble to look around the room when the statement was made and at least half the attendees had bewildered looks on their faces.

Part of our business is acting as SEO consultants, but that doesn’t stop us using PPC to promote some of our websites. The important thing about running any business whether online or in Main Street is that you must keep an open mind when it comes to promoting. Let me explain how we go about it. For the benefit of this article we will assume that we are selling dog training videos.

1. We build a small website to review the product that we wish to sell. Before we build the website we buy the product to be sure it is something we wish to add our name to. We have a reputation to protect.

2. Using our own in-house strategies we promote that website to page 1 on the major search engines. This can take anywhere between two weeks and two months depending upon competition for our chosen keywords.

3. When we hit page 1 in the search engines sales start to come.

4. We monitor sales to keywords so that we know which keywords are making sales.

5. If the product starts selling fast it tells us that the market is ready for this product providing we use these keywords. Only now will we spend money on PPC (pay per click) advertising for products that are selling well using search engine optimization.

6. We use PPC for as long as the product sells at a better than expected rate and when sales drop off we cease the PPC campaign and rely upon SEO totally.

Let us look at the math of using our system compared to using the PPC system that the seminar speaker was so keen to push:

Cost of building website = 1 hour labor = $87 (We use a template and just change background colors)

Domain name: $12 year. Web Hosting $10 per month. Carry out SEO $130 per month labor charges

Initial cost for 3 months = $119 Upkeep of optimization 3 months = $390

Income: Normally zero for month 1 and 2 – Month 3 we would expect to make upwards of 20 sales – Say $30 commission each sale – $30 x 20 = $600 and this figure should increase each month.

Now let us use PPC @ $0.50 per click @ 1% sales to clicks ratio. [Note: Most campaigns using PPC average around 1% sales to clicks – There are exceptions but few achieve better and many achieve worse.]

You still have the same start up costs of $87 to make the website $12 to register a domain name and $10 per month hosting costs.

To make 20 sales with 1% sales to clicks ratio you require 2,000 clicks which will cost you $1,000 payable in increments but certainly payable long before you start receiving commissions. This $1,000 outlay will return you $600 for 20 sales or a loss of $400.

Now let us assume that you add SEO sales with PPC sales you will show a profit of $200 for 40 sales. This profit is on your PPC costs and ignores your normal overheads.

It is also fair to say that we never pay 50 cents per click because we understand PPC and know how to get well positioned ads for just a few cents per click. If you are starting you do not have this knowledge or the means of finding these cheap clicks and that is why you should be concentrating on SEO to build your business.

PPC is expensive if you lack knowledge of the system. Optimization is pretty useless unless your site is on the first page of the major search engines.

It is a difficult balancing act but it works far better if you put the low cost SEO first and only use high cost PPC when you find yourself in a Bull market. This way you are reducing the cost of running your business until it makes enough to use other promotions.

SEO is the first and most important step in building your online business.

Video Marketing is important to an internet marketer.

Wealth buliding owes nothing to luck.

For professional performance marketing take a look at this website.