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3 Reasons Why Organic SEO is Not Enough to Increase ROI

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Published: March 16, 2015

The world has officially entered a new era in product/service advertising. In order to remain relevant in today’s dynamic business environment, a highly functional website with abundant search engine optimization (SEO) has become a standard tool for drawing customers, especially for e-commerce based businesses. But is that enough?

Increasing ROI Through Interne Marketing
The world of Internet marketing has undergone a radical change over the past few years. Companies used to buy space for banner advertisements on other websites as a way to increase leads, which would hopefully lead to higher revenues and a stronger ROI. Those days are fading into the past. Companies are now forced to rely on a well-constructed website, using SEO to grab the attention of potential customers through search engines. Unfortunately, standard (organic) listings on search engines don’t seem to be sufficient enough to increase ROI to desired levels.

Organic SEO Versus Pay Per Click
Perhaps one day it will change, but as of today, most users of search engines have very little to no knowledge about how company links are selected to appear within search results. For companies that don’t wish to pay for advertising through search engines like Bing and Google, they receive random placement throughout the organic result pages based on search engine algorithms. For some searches, there could be thousands of pages of results. For those who are willing to pay for advertising, they can purchase pay-per-click services that gives them priority within search engine results plus an opportunity to earn additional sponsored advertising, which is usually found at the top or to the side of the organic listing results. If a company really wants to compete, organic SEO has few advantages.

3 Reasons Why Organic SEO is Not Enough to Increase ROI
It is important to note that search engines are in business to make money, not providing free advertising services for needy business owners. As a matter of fact, Google derives 91% of its revenue from selling advertising. With that in mind, there are three reasons why organic SEO is usually not effective enough to drive revenues and increase ROI.

1. Competition – Regardless of which industry a business occupies space within, they are going to incur stiff competition from sophisticated, well-financed competitors that are prepared to pay whatever is necessary to muscle up on SEO and obtain sponsored placements for any and all search terms they need covered. For companies that are trying to rely solely on organic SEO, they will find themselves sitting on page 444 with no recourse and a consistent lack of site traffic unless they follow suit.

2. Algorithm Changes – Even if a company’s SEO is fine-tuned to drive its link to the first couple of pages, the search engine companies have no basis for loyalty to organic SEO dependents. They are apt to change the algorithms that drive links towards the top at any point in time, rendering all the time and effort used in optimizing an advertising campaign as worthless.

3. Customer Search Engine Habits – Statistics show that 70% of search engine users will find the desired results with the first two pages of results. For Google, 18% of the first clicks made by users go to the first link. Ultimately, search engine users determine the effectiveness of any company’s advertising efforts. Simply put, organic SEO does little to help a company get noticed and getting noticed in the primary objective.

For smaller companies in a unique space, organic SEO might be enough. However, most companies have to deal with real competition and like anything else in life and business, spending money is often the only way to get the desired results. For companies that want higher ROI through SEO, investment in search engine advertising might be the only option.

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