Should I spend money on seo or google ads?
Companies looking to increase their search results online always ask us whether they should put their budget dollars towards SEO (search engine optimization) or towards Google Ads. The answer will vary depending on the company, but 90% of the time our answer is – spend your money on SEO. There are few reasons for that answer and we’ll do our best to cover the main points for you so you can make and educated decision.
Google Ads Quick Overview
We all love quick fixes and putting together an ad campaign and gaining a bunch of leads is attractive for any business, but the reality is very different than the expectations. One thing you may not realize is that Google Ads aren’t a set price, it’s a bidding war. The cost per ad depends entirely on the key words you are targeting and your locale. For example, if you’re in the suburbs of Chicago you may spend four or five dollars per click while those in your same industry targeting leads downtown Chicago may pay seventeen dollars per click – for the exact same key word.
Google Ads need to be monitored and tweaked based on their performance. If you’re not going to do that management, you’ll need to pay a marketing agency to handle it for you. Google takes thirty cents of every dollar you spend on Google Ads and you’ll have agency management fees on top of that. You can see how the cost adds up quickly. Unless you have a fairly high price point to absorb all of those costs to make it worth your while, you may find yourself running out of your marketing budget before you’ve generated enough business to justify the spend.
9/10 Times We Recommend Investing in SEO over Google Ads
So why do we suggest for most companies that they spend their money with SEO instead of with Google Ads? Because the work done on SEO will continue to work for you for a very long time, providing you stick with it long enough. What we mean by that, is only having someone work on your SEO for a few months isn’t enough to move the needle permanently. However, if you stick with it for a year or more you can significantly increase your key word universe and make an impact on your online presence and search results.
The other advantage of spending money on SEO is that when a company like ours takes it on, we do a full audit of your website, your social media platforms and your business listings and by updating and optimizing all of those listings we fix issues that were keeping your business from ranking better.
What Does OnGoing SEO Include?
Ongoing SEO encompasses things like business listings, blog writing, back linking and adding relevant copy to your website and all the other ways that Google determines the quality score of your website. The better your quality score, the more Google finds you credible. The more credible and relevant your website – the better you will rank when people search for your product or service.
SEO is a long-term play and you need to be in it for the long haul. We recommend 12 months at a minimum. Can you do if for three or six months, well of course, but moving the needle takes time and if you stop just as you’re starting to gain traction what happens? Just like with anything else, you will backslide. In our opinion, it’s a waste of money if you aren’t committed to keeping this up.
Summary
Investing in your business should very much be part of your business plan and SEO should very much be part of your marketing plan. You can always increase or decrease the amount of hours spent on your SEO each month but you do want to stick to the overall commitment of building your universe of keywords so prospects can find you easily. The more aggressive you are in your SEO strategy the more likely you’ll be able to attract your ideal client at a lower cost per lead than running ads.
Always be sure to calculate your life-time value of a client versus your monthly SEO budget so you know how many new customers you need to pay for your SEO program. It becomes exciting when you start closing business that easily justifies your monthly spend!
For more information SEO or if you’d like to find out if we can help you increase your leads, give us a call at 1.888.723.7194 or email info@visionforcemarketing.com