Running an effective SEO strategy is becoming an increasingly expensive business. The question of how to handle the increasing expenses tied to SEO isn't only about how to manage costs. Identifying why the process has become more expensive in the first place will help you work out how to improve your website ranking while avoiding the most costly price hikes.
If you outsource your SEO strategy you will have noticed that over the past several years SEO services have been raising their rates on a regular basis. Even if you manage all of your SEO in-house, you may have noticed an increase in costs. The question of how to handle the increasing expenses tied to SEO is something every business is dealing with. The question isn't only how to manage costs, but identifying why the process has ecome more expensive in the first place.
There Is More Competition
The easy answer is competition. The more websites you are competing against in your market niche necessarily means more resources invested to stay ahead. Plus if your competitors are willing to invest more heavily in SEO, you will fall behind. As a result, you will have to invest even more to catch up and overtake them in the rankings.
More Keywords Have Become Unique
Another issue which is driving up SEO costs is how keywords are treated. With better geo-targeting and personalization algorithms being implemented by search engines, every keyword is now unique. There are generic, localized, e-commerce, and other keywords, all of which must be optimized differently in order to run a successful SEO campaign. Plus, some big-money keywords no longer display the top 10 results because the page is filled with product images and PPC ads. This means your site must rank in the top 6-8 in order to be guaranteed a spot on Page 1.
Most SEO Strategies Are Reactive
Another reason why SEO keeps getting more expensive is because the overall strategy is reactive. Anytime there is a major change to the search engine's algorithm, SEO campaigns must alter their methods in order to maintain their rankings or recover from any drops. Unfortunately, making wholesale changes to SEO is a resource intensive process.
One way to save money on SEO is by developing a proactive SEO strategy. These campaigns are based on upcoming changes rather than current best practices. Very few Google algorithm updates are completely without warning. The key is to identify what changes are coming and set yourself up for them before they occur. Another thing to keep in mind is sometimes it is less expensive to start over from scratch than trying to overcome a major penalty.
The Most Effective SEO Practices Are Inherently Difficult to Scale
No matter how basic or complex your SEO strategy may be, there are few SEO practices which are easy to scale. While scalability is always possible, that doesn't make it inexpensive. When stretching a small SEO budget, it is easy to value short-term gain via automation over long term penalties. The more an SEO process is scaled, the more likely it will leave a noticeable footprint. If a footprint is established and then identified by Google, any site with the same footprint will get hit. This is problematic for those who use the exact same SEO process across multiple websites.
Tracking and Evaluating Performance is Harder than Ever
The final large expense SEO creates is tracking and analyzing data. It is no secret that search engines hold back performance related data to some extent. If they didn't, then everyone would know exactly what they needed to do in order to game the system. To complicate matters, the algorithms are nearly impossible to figure out completely. This makes it difficult to attribute a change your ranking to a specific SEO action.
SEO is an incredibly valuable tool for traffic generation. The SEO game has been designed by the search engines and the rules are constantly being changed. There is little chance that SEO will become less expensive in the future. The key is to maximize ROI and dedicate more resources as needed.
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