To best understand why SEO is so powerful, I have constructed an article that best explains it in good ole fashion dollars and cents

SEO has an accumulative effect.  Many people do not realize how effective it is, because the results accumulate, and get better each month as the services continue.  Some people get ranked and quit, and take the trickle of leads and are happy with it.

The best way to capitalize on Search Engine Optimization, is to keep on striking when the iron is hot.  In other words, just because a site is ranking does not mean its a good idea to stop improving the position of the ranks, or ranking for more keywords.

Here is an illustration of how powerful this is.

I will use an example of one of my clients sites that targets Realty Vancouver.

We will need to place some values into this to show you how this works.  These are not the real values of what my client paid, as I do not want to breach any confidentiality with the client.  However we need some numbers to show how the accumulative effects of SEO

Site Price:  5000.00 to build a site, and GUARANTEE rankings on the first page Google Ranking for 1 keyword term searched at least 250 times or more per day in Google.

Lets just for the sake of easy calculations say that 1 customer whether they bought a house or list a house with this client is only worth 5k.  I think that is a conservative safe number which you should always use when doing projections.  In Vancouver the average house sells for 679,000 as of September 2010. Even a 1 bdrm apartment can sell for 250,000+.  The figure of 5k per customer, you can see will be a very conservative number.

Now lets say that we need 10 leads to get this one customer.

Here is how SEO works:

• Month 1.  We have you ranked for 1-2 relative keywords (like we do right now)  Leads = 2
• Month 2.  Your existing rankings have gone higher, plus you are now ranking for 2-3 other keywords  Leads = 3
• Month 3.  You are now ranking for 5-7 keywords on the first page.         Leads = 5
• Month 4.  Existing rankings are climbing, and you have captured #1 in Google for one of your main keywords.  Leads = 10
• Month 5.  Now ranking for 15 keywords, 10 on first page, and a few top 3 listings.  Leads =  15
• Month 6.  We are now happy with all the keywords we are ranking for, and work only on boosting these rankings.  Leads = 20
• Month 7.  Anchor the keywords.   Leads = 25
• Month 8.  Anchor the keywords.  Leads = 30
• Month 9.  Anchor the keywords.  Leads = 40
• Month 10.  Anchor the keywords Leads = 60
• Month 11.  Anchor the keywords Leads = 80
• Month 12.  Anchor the keywords Leads = 90

Now lets look at a few examples of where a person stops their services.

Lets say person 1 stops when the site is built, (biggest cost portion) and it is ranking for 1-2 keywords (like this one is right now) The site owner gets 2 leads per month for the next 12 months.  2 leads convert and you get 10,000.00 dollars.  Not a bad return, but you might have waited 8-10 months for your investment to mature.

Now let’s look at the other scale of SEO

Client 2 sticks with the SEO Services for 1 full year.

The investment = 5000 + (12 X 300.00)  = 8600.00

Client has accumulated 396 leads.

Client has converted 39 leads, and made 195,000.00 in profit.   A much better return.

*Keep in mind these are arbitrary numbers and do not have any factual evidence to if this is what will occur.  The numbers were arbitrarily chosen to demonstrate the accumulative effects of SEO.  Some sites with different keywords, could see much more leads than this demonstration, and some could receive a lot less.  It is all relevant to how many searches are done each day for the specific keywords, and how well the site converts into an online submission, and then converted into an actual customer.

The main point is, that after 5 years of doing this for my own sites, prior to opening mywebmarketingservices.ca I now receive 800+ leads per month joining my newsletters without any activity or promotion on my part.  In fact I have not done any efforts in my list building now for over 2 years, and yet these numbers keep pouring in month after month after month.  My price point to my products that people are coming into are much lower, and in a very competitive niche, the conversions are lower too.  However, without any effort on my part, I have made a very decent living online on autopilot due to these leads.

This process can be done in any niche, any business, anytime.  I am not a realtor,  and the ad content value is not worth me putting in the effort to rank a site to collect ad revenue.  However to a realtor that makes 5k per transaction……this is the best ROI advertising that can be spent.  Better than Yellow Pages, better than offline print media, mail outs and other traditional methods that realtors use.  If you are a realtor in an area other than Vancouver BC where it would be a conflict of interest against my client, then get a Free SEO Quote here

This will not only work with realtors, but any type of business, and specifically works well in Geo Targeted areas.  In other words businesses that operate within a specific, city, town, region.

At the point of initially ranking a client,  too many people don’t move forward because the results at this stage are not tangible yet.  They wait for the first sale, then start.  Then they are so much farther behind than where they would have been because of the accumulative effect. In the above model, it only takes 2 leads per year to be in profit.

What you need to ask yourself is:

• what is the lifetime value of 1 client in your business?
• how many leads does it take to convert the prospect into a client?

Once you have that data, it is quite easy to reverse engineer how many leads you need at what price point to be in profit.

Good SEO will provide a much higher ROI than even other forms of online advertising like Pay Per Click, or advertising directories.

Here is why.

SEO is getting ranked for terms that people are searching for.  This is attraction marketing.  You are far more successful closing business from people that searching for you, rather than placing ads on and offline hoping to gather the right audience.  Nothing is more targeted than a person searching Spokane Realtor and finding you the Spokane Realtor on the top of Google.  Or Seattle, or Vancouver, or any city.  When people type in a city, and a service, they are looking to engage your services, or buy your product.

That is why GOOD SEO is the best ROI on any advertising in the current age.

A Good SEO firm will properly advise you on the keywords you should target.

A Good SEO firm will tell you, that the easiest paths to rank, including purchasing and setting up a completely new domain with the keywords in the domain.

If you have had an SEO company charge you monthly services for what they do, and they are working on your rankings on a domain name that is counter productive to their SEO efforts, there is a chance that they are lining their pockets with your hard earned money when they could have saved you a small fortune, by building and optimizing an entirely different domain.

Please comment below on this article if you have found this informative.  We love to hear from our readers!