The title of this article almost feels completely blasphemous. In fact, you’ll be hard pressed to find many articles “contemplating” the need for what most consider an obvious website function.
Most consider SEO to be an unquestioned foundation of every business.
Every business needs SEO, its just a matter of how they accomplish that “needed SEO.”
Right?
Eh, not completely.
I’m going to put forth some cases whereas pushing energy into SEO is detrimental to the business. That’s right, I’m going to show scenarios that prove SEO isn’t always a good thing to attempt (at least not for every business).
So let’s get started…
You Are Big In Display Ads (Or Anything BUT SEO)
Your bread and butter is PPC. You know how to buy and how to profit from those buys. You have buyers, or you are the buyer. You know the value of your product and what types of landing pages best convert.
It’s possible that adding in SEO could serve to harm your golden goose.
How?
Often times, when small businesses first jump into SEO, they do so by just sticking their toes in the water. The small business wants to make sure the waters not too cold or too hot before just diving into it.
But that can lead to exhausting of resources. Because in most cases, this means you won’t dedicate or allocate appropriate resources. This means your bread and butter butter’ers get overtaxed and become less focused on what really drives the business.
I know, this seems implausible. But the fact is, I see it all the time. A lot of times, businesses end up seeking out digital marketing solutions because their current staff is overtaxed.
I’ve seen it all. I’ve seen secretaries turned full-time SEO’ers. The phone’s ringing and ringing and ringing…
Because people think SEO can be a “little here, little there” project, they often end up over-working various employees. They don’t even realize it is happening. You end up with sale’s people watching SEO Youtubes all day, not selling your product.
SEO is a rabbit hole, it requires appropriately allocated resources. Otherwise, it tragically overwhelms resources.
Your Product Or Service Doesn’t Benefit From Search Results
This happens much more than you might think.
Some products or services don’t matter on SEO. Either the product can’t cash in on the terms it would require being listed for, or the demographic that potentially buys the product isn’t searching it.
This is easily figured out by auditing the keywords your business would be listed for. Software such as SEMRush will show you the CPC (cost per click) numbers of the keywords your business seeks. If that cost is .02, or .00, that means no one even cares to bid on your product.
Now, that could just mean your product is super unique and doesn’t have affiliate opportunities anywhere on the web. In that case, you could see an opportunity to be the first to create an affiliate opportunity.
The greater point of this section is to know the value of your keywords and asses your true opportunity in SEO.
You Plan To Attempt SEO On The Cheap
A sale is good…until it’s not…
Its OK to be on a budget. Digital marketing companies will often try to shame you into feeling otherwise. If you don’t allow them to “SEO your website for $3,000 a month on a contractual basis,” you are sure to fail. You are cheap. You don’t truly care about your business.
But that’s the thing with business, it comes from a lot of different sources (as we’ve discussed already).
There is no doubt that quality SEO work is costly. $3,000 a month could be too much, depending on what’s required, but there isn’t much of an argument that it costs money.
When you listen to enough shaming, you almost start to feel that you “must do something.” And that’s when you may start considering crappy, cheap SEO folks.
In your mind, cheap SEO is worth it. It might work. If it doesn’t, you rolled the dice and didn’t wreck your budget. It was a gamble, it failed, you’ll return to the idea when you have more money to spend.
But the problem is, cheap SEO maybe harmed your website.
Cheap SEO services often utilize foreign or crappy content, alongside shoddy backlinks.
There is nothing wrong with foreign content so long as the English is good. Or the content is foreign-based. You just don’t want broken English articles. You don’t want 300-word mass-produced articles, either. And you REALLY do not want shoddy backlinks.
In any of these cases, your site can get penalized or just have no potential at good rankings. Google is too wise for unsavory SEO attempts.
Here’s the deeper issue. If you do get a penalty, when you finally hire a capable SEO, they will charge you MORE to fix the old issue.
In this case, you’d have been better off doing nothing rather than ending up with a bunch of crappy articles and backlinks from obvious link farm websites.
A cheap SEO company can literally ruin your hopes for SEO.
Conclusion
SEO is not always for every small business. Yes, it’s awkward to say such things, but the truth is the truth. SEO requires money and resources in almost every case. That means that SEO is an investment. You should never blindly invest in anything. Always do your due diligence prior. Its also worth noting that cheap SEO can put your website into Google penalty. So in some cases, you aren’t just losing money, you’re ruining your business online property.
