The question of if hiring an SEO company to work on your website rankings is worth it is going to depend on your goals, the quality of the work done by that SEO company and the competitiveness of your industry. All of these factors must be assessed in order to figure out if hiring an SEO company will be worth it to you, because the rankings that are developed over time will be directly connected to all of them. You must do some research to figure out just how many people are seeking your type of business online from your sales area, the most effective way to do this is using Google Ads. The way it is done is to open an Ads account so as to get access to the tools that are provided to advertisers. Within these tools, you can input the types of phrases that you assume people would be searching for, “Las Vegas SEO company” as an example of how potential customers might find a company like ours. Take this number and divide it by 50%, and that is the number that you can assume would click through to your website if you were in the #1 position (this is the clickthrough statistic that is most applicable for websites.) Take that number and divide it by the average number of clicks it takes to your website to convert to a customer (conversion rate) and you have the value of a number 1 position for that phrase. Lets say it takes 100 visitors to your website typically to create 1 customer, then if that total number of clicks to the site was 400 in a month you can assume you would get 4 new customers. Multiply that number by the typical amount of profit you make from a customer and you will have a specific number that is the value to your business of that placement every month. If the SEO company can get you into that number 1 placement within a certain number of months at a specific monthly rate for their work, and you can find out if SEO is worth it to your business. Keep in mind that the SEO work that is done to target a specific phrase will also cause related phrases to improve, so it is not like you are judging SEO value only on that one phrase. If the profit that is generated by those clickthroughs to you website generates enough profit to pay for the SEO work, then SEO is worth it.
Competition
Additional factors that are going to come into play when it comes to judging SEO value is competitiveness. This means how competitive your industry is in your local areas for your products, or at least how competitive the websites are. If it is a highly competitive industry like personal injury law, then there is a very good chance that the websites that are indexed by Google within that region are highly developed, and are probably doing SEO for themselves. This means that the amount of work that will need to be done by your SEO company is going to increase, and the timeframe that it will take for quality SEO work to develop a trust of the website as an authority on the topics will also be increased. For lesser competition industries where there are only a few players online, you can probably expect those top results in rankings to be developed more quickly. As with all things, the less competition there is the easier it is to win.
Quality Of SEO Work
Naturally, the quality of the work that is done by the SEO company is going to dictate how quickly you can rise into positions that convert into customers. Nothing beyond the first page of results will get you any new customers, so if the quality of the work they do is substandard you are literally wasting your money. This is why it is never a good idea to judge SEO companies on the prices they charge and choose the cheapest. You have to understand that they are in business just like you are, and if they are able to charge cheaper prices then they are probably hiring employees that have less experience. Good quality work must be compensated for, and hiring cheap employees might get work done, but when judged against better quality work it will fall short. In the SEO world, this is going to translate into content, and how much good quality content on a topic can be generated by that company for the budget you are paying them. It will be difficult to differentiate between good quality and bad quality initially, so it is best to judge them off the successes they can show for other customers. If their strategy works for others, then it will probably work for you. Ask to see examples of good rankings they have developed for customers in the past.
Your Goals
How fast you want to get to a good position on the first page is going to dictate how much SEO costs by most reputable companies. SEO takes time, and usually it will take upwards of six months or more to gain first page rankings for average competition industries. Many SEO companies will string you along because of this fact, and will keep telling you that they need more time because SEO takes time. This is only partially true, and while it does take time to develop rankings there should be a continual upward trend in rankings that can be observed. If you started on page ten, then by the first few months of work you should rise to page 8 or 7. Ever few months you should be seeing improvement on your way to a fist page placement, and this is the way you can judge if the SEO program is working. If it is not, there are probably a number of reasons for the failure. Either the SEO company is not doing enough work and needs more budget, or the quality of the work is substandard. You need to be in touch with the ongoing rankings and progression in order to make good decisions. Also keep in mind that it is far easier to go from page 10 to page 2 than it is to go from position 10 on page 1 to a number 1. All of the real competition is on that first page, so even a substandard SEO company should be able to get you improvements from deep pages to page 2 or 3.
