Why SEO Doesn’t Work - Part 3 of a 5-Part Series

Why SEO Doesn’t Work - Part 3 of 5-Part Series
Proving Value on SEO
by Laura Thieme

I originally wrote this series in 2008. A lot has changed since then. I’ve scratched a good portion of this particular blog entry, and re-written it. I’ve kept the Dyson reference, because it’s appropriate.

Proving Value on SEO:
Are you familiar with Dyson vacuum cleaners? Have you seen the Dyson commercial, where Dyson (owner/founder) talks about how he had to test, and yes, fail to figure it all out - to succeed. To get a better vacuum cleaner, they reference 60,000 hours of research. That’s a lot of research to figure out the ingredients to a successful vacuum cleaner.

I imagine I’ve spent the same in 13+ years of SEO.

Do you realize how much time 60,000 hours of research represents?

If you take 11 years of work, 345 days a year of work (which admittedly sounds insane but not unusual for workaholics or business owners), averaging 15 hours a day, that brings you to nearly 57,000 man-hours.

Add staff resources, a few researchers, and it’s easy to top 60,000 man-hours in a lesser time-frame, but regardless to perfect something in one product. Dyson and his team spent a lot of time and years in research, testing and figuring out what would work best about his vacuum cleaner. He obviously had to be passionate, brilliant, determined, and yes, just a little slightly off-balance. I say that with all due respect. James Cameron and Avatar comes to mind right now. Brilliant people capable of achieving impressive things never do these things in a few hours.

How does this relate to SEO and my claim that it doesn’t work? SEO takes time, lots of time - insane amounts of time. It takes resources, research, passion, brilliance, determination, and yes, just a little insanity to keep it going. Because SEO is not easy. SEO is not always science. There is a broad component of luck and timing behind it all. I have many stories to share with you someday, if you cared to listen. Sometimes it’s absolutely insane what has worked, and what hasn’t worked with SEO.

It’s relatively easy to engage in some basic SEO components. Last year, I did metadata, page headings, URL re-writes, and put everything in an Excel spreadsheet for the client. They uploaded the changes. They paid about $13k for this. They did not pay for maintenance. They do pay, however, for monthly reports. I’ve had the luxury of on-boarding their paid search campaign and search analytics work since then. For that, they spend approximately $50k+ a month in two separate accounts, each. SEO gets very little attention, as is typical.

So, once SEO is done, how do you prove results?

Many will think SEO is about visibility, and search engine rankings

Ranking Trend of Keyword Computer Rentals in Google

The screenshot above is a client with their computer rentals ranking. When they first came to us, they had begun to lose rankings for many terms due to a hack attack. Computer rentals was eventually lost, and as you see, eventually regained after a long period of time.

But, what’s more important than a ranking is whether or not that keyword sent measurable business/revenue to the client.

Our Bizwatch Search Analytics report includes ranking/visibility, traffic, leads, conversion rate, and whether or not there was search prediction for this term based on Wordtracker.com’s API.

Bizwatch Search Analytics

The above wide-screened screenshot (sorry need to make it smaller when I have time to do so) shows traffic, leads, conversion rate on the keyword, and corresponding organic ranking. It doesn’t show in this particular report whether or not they are advertising on this keyword.

If you drill down on “computer rentals” in Bizwatch Search Analytics, you can see the break out of organic versus paid search in terms of leads, conversion rate, and bounce rate.

Organic vs Paid Kw KPIs

It’s not just about rankings, or traffic, or even leads. In this scenario, in a tough economy, it becomes even harder to measure. It’s about revenue on the back-end. It’s about profit margins.

What if when all is said and done, this keyword doesn’t consistently return a profitable advertisement investment?

With paid search or PPC, you can measure whether or not a keyword is working. It’s faster to have visibility and send traffic. With SEO, it takes a long time to acquire visibility. You won’t be ensured traffic with a particular keyword regardless of “projections”.

Neither will ensure you leads or sales, or profitable revenue. So, my suggestion is to do paid search or PPC, and learn from what works with PPC. Then, spend time and effort on SEO. You can measure organic versus paid in terms of visibility, traffic, and leads/online sales with Bizwatch Search Analytics Platform.

We recommend a Bizwatch Search Analytics Traffic & PPC Audit to determine which keywords perform best for you on your existing website. Then, from that information, we can begin determining the right SEO keywords for your business.