How Important is SEO for Your Company? – Business Owner Must Know
As a business owner, you may have considered utilizing SEO for your company, despite not knowing it fully. This is simply the practice of putting your website on the first page of Search Engine Results Page for search terms related to your product/service.
In Singapore, the SEO industry has pretty much matured and pricing is much more transparent than before. The most common type of pricing model is the monthly retainer package which charges by the number of target keywords. There are KPI’s or key performance indicators you can utilize that determine whether your keywords are working or not.
However, there is still no standard price but typically it is in the hundred to thousand range. It can go anywhere from $500 a month to $3000 a month, or even $1,000 to $2,000 a month. Unfortunately, being expensive doesn’t always mean its good.
Rankings are non-guaranteed and there’s no 100% certainty. All efforts with regards to SEO for your company will also come with the following disclaimers:
- It takes 3 to 6 months for SEO to produce results
- The KPI of a Singapore SEO service provider would typically be getting 20-30% of your keywords on the 1st page of Google search results page in 3-6 months.
- If KPI is not met, the agency will continue to do SEO for you for free thereafter
Performance-based Model
You can only tell if the SEO service doesn’t work for your business after 6 months. This means that you still risk losing 6 months’ worth of time and monetary investment if the rankings you expected don’t manifest. Knowing that they can’t control Google, some agencies have applied the performance-based pricing model. This model enables service providers to charge only when you begin to rank. Similarly, in the event that your website stops ranking, you also stop paying.
Revenue-based SEO
The other model is a revenue-based SEO. The goal of SEO for your company is to generate leads and sales. This removes all the problems mentioned above by getting the provider to split the risk with you. The other feature of this model is that you must be ready to work with the agency for a considerably long period of time. The reason being is that SEO is a long term strategy in which the fruits of labour follow an exponential curve.
What to Do First?
Before making any decision, it is always a good idea to go have a trial with your agency first to gauge suitability. Instead of long term SEO partnership, you may consider having them do a campaign for the short run. For example, Search Engine Marketing allows you to see results in 1-3 months’ time. To find the most SEO for your business, it is best you sit down with your agency and allow them to understand your business. Eventually, they will uncover keywords that your competitors have missed out and never thought of. Keyword research is where business and IT come together to achieve a beautiful synergy.
The next step would be the on-page SEO, where the technician logs into your website to make certain changes to increase its relevancy based on chosen keywords. Meanwhile, off-page SEO involves initiatives beyond your website. It happens by getting external web entities to provide mentions of your website, somewhat like endorsements. If your website has been existing several years ago, the site architecture and URL structure are likely not so conducive from the SEO perspective.
Ensuring User Experience
If the design makes your web user feel like they are in a maze, even if you aced all other factors, your website will still be ignored by Google. User experience is an important yardstick of Google in ranking your website. Even if you do not have plans to start a marketing agency, getting your team or yourself educated in basic SEO still makes sense. Before making any decision, it is best to consult the experts. SEO companies can factor all your needs into an entire package along with services and provide and train you on only what you need.
