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John McCarthy is the Senior Director of Digital Strategy at WebMetro, a leading internet advertising agency with expertise in pay per click advertising, contextual/display advertising, SEO, web presence development, social media advertising, and ROI-driven web design. John McCarthy leads WebMetro’s efforts in researching, analyzing, and developing online direct marketing strategies for WebMetro clients.

Prior to joining WebMetro, John worked for Bruce Clay, Countrywide Home Loans, Transamerica and First Consulting Group. Presently, John serves on the Direct Marketing Association’s Search Engine Marketing Council and is also a member of Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO), Web Analytics Association, and American Advertising Federation.

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SEO just might not be for you

Written on
Oct 5, 2009 
Author
John McCarthy  |
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SEO just might not be for you

SEO_smallADOTAS – Although I am a big believer in the value of SEO, sometimes an SEO campaign is not in a client’s best interest — at least initially. 

During a recent conversation with the president of a B2B technology company, I asked why he was considering implementing an SEO campaign. Like many businesses I speak to today, he acknowledged the economic slowdown caused a drop in leads for his sales team. Wanting to develop new lead streams, he reached out to several of his peers at competing companies about their lead development efforts. 

A few of his competitors acknowledged they were largely getting leads and customers from organic search.  They had invested in SEO as a customer acquisition strategy a year earlier and were now reaping the rewards of the investment.  Believing he was missing the boat on leads and sales, the president of the technology company set aside a budget and contacted WebMetro to implement an SEO campaign.

After learning this information about the slowdown in leads and what his competitors were implementing, I asked the president a very important question: “Do you need to make the phone ring tomorrow?” 

He replied, “What do you mean?” 

I asked again, but this time with some clarification, “Do you need to make the telephone ring tomorrow or six to nine months from now?”

After a moment of silence, he responded, “Well, my sales team has enough leads in their pipeline for the next three to four weeks. After that, I don’t know. Why?”

I explained that an average new SEO campaign often takes six to nine months for initial rankings to develop and often longer for campaigns in highly competitive markets. The search engine optimization process is fairly involved and generally requires a client to modify its website, add content to support relevancy needs and allow time to properly develop link popularity.

 

In the case of this technology company, it would take longer than average since the website had very little content compared to its peers.  For most clients, content development is labor-intensive and takes considerable time to write, approve and add to a website.

Two revenue streams from one investment

After listening to my explanation the president then responded, “If SEO is not the answer, what should I do?” 

I explained that after considering his budget and the need to immediately start filling a sales pipeline, the best customer acquisition strategy for the company is paid search. With paid search we can literally make the phone ring within a few weeks to dovetail into his existing sales pipeline. 

While the paid search campaign is running, we can build the proper foundation for an SEO campaign.  We can start by implementing site-wide best practices in terms of site architecture and page construction. We can research the content needs and then build a schedule to deliver and implement quality content over time. With time on our side, we can re-engineer the site to make it search engine ready within a few short months. 

Sometimes the best initial customer acquisition strategy in online marketing is not SEO, but paid search.  When properly implemented, a paid search campaign will literally make the phone ring and therefore develop immediate revenue for your company.  Once the paid search campaign is firing on all cylinders, we can then re-invest the profits into an SEO campaign — essentially getting two revenue streams from one investment.





Reader Comments.

- OBJECTION your Honor! Counsel’s line of questioning is leading and contains
“pregnant” questions.

- Objection sustained.

John, while I agree with your conclusion (for different reasons than you expressed), the trite ying-yang of online marketing – pitting SEM’s immediate impact to SEO’s long term results – is too facile and misleading. I proffer that investing in better engaging content will be the better investment. Good online marketing initiatives for a B2B company always yields short term results. Too often SEM budgets leading prospects to poor sites is a short term illusion and a long term disaster.

- I rest my case.

Posted by Lawrence Johnson | 3:55 pm on October 5, 2009.

Great article.

I agree with your premise and conclusions 100%.

Most people think they have a traffic problem when in reality they have a conversion problem.

Paid search forces you to make sure that you optimize the conversion process as much as possible.

Also, it has been my experience that the majority of clients buy into the “free traffic” myth. It is a necessary but very tough seel to persuade a client that there is no such thing as free traffic.

Posted by Fred Duckworth | 1:40 pm on October 6, 2009.

I think a company should never put off SEO. Whether they need the phone to ring now or later they still need SEO regardless. SEO spans so wide with it’s efforts that link building alone could make the phone ring tomorrow all while allowing your business website to climb in rankings.

Posted by Nick Stamoulis | 8:43 am on October 8, 2009.

Lawrence, Fred and Nick, I really appreciate your comments.

I agree with all your statements. I left out details such as budget, cost per lead and lead volume goals to avoid boring the audience.

For another client in a different market, my recommendations would have been very different.

I am strong advocate of integrated campaigns such as SEO and paid, social and SEO, social and contextual, etc. Integration generates lift, protects brands and maximizes opportunities.

To Nick’s point, yes SEO has many strategies and tactics to boost rankings immediately, especially via linking. Some have short term results and others long term. In fact a month ago, we launched a new client and literally in 3-5 hours following release of page edits, we obtained first page rankings for several keywords.

With personalized and universal search, SEO is not always about the rankings these days. It is also about maximizing the traffic volume that generates leads and sales from the campaign. This is how I measure the success.

Again, I appreciate the comments.

Cheers!

Posted by John McCarthy | 7:00 pm on October 11, 2009.

John, your article really goes to show the importance of asking the right questions to the owner of a company who is interested in any SEO or PPC.

Brilliant!

Kayvan Mott

Posted by Kayan Mott | 12:58 pm on November 23, 2009.

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