Really? SEO? Is It Worth The Investment?

Let's take a look at SEO.  It's a subject that can befuddle the best of us, especially if you're not familiar with it.  People will often say \"I want the number one position for "dog training" in Google\"

They often get blank stares, or silence.

Let me explain.  With a keyword like "dog training" there is a pretty large search volume, and a very large amount of competition.  According to Google, there is over 1.2 million searches per month and over 18.1 million competing pages!

To optimize for that keyword phrase would not be practical for most people.

So a keyword like "dog training school" still has 33,100 searches per month and only 156,000 competing pages.

Now this is a keyword that would be more viable to rank #1 for.

But let's face it, you still need to know if it's worth going for a keyword like this.  Will it make financial sense?

For example, you might be selling $15 e-book about how to choose the best dog training school. Now to take the #1 spot in Google for \"dog training schools\" is possible, but it could take month, and the cost will be quite high.  It will either cost you time to build enough links to take the #1 spot (if you are good enough at SEO), OR it will cost you money to pay someone to do it for you.

Once you get to that #1 position, you would have to sell maybe 200 or more of those $15 e-books just so you can break even.  That's before you make any profit.  In that case, it may not be worth the investment.

BUT,  if you were selling classes for your dog training school and a customer would pay $200 per class, you would see a return on your investment much much faster, and most likely turn a profit quickly.

After taking the number one position there is no need to keep building links, so the outgoing costs stop.  But you keep getting the business!    What a great deal for you and your business!  When you compare SEO to radio ads, billboards or TV, you can see that the return on investment (ROI) can be so much higher.  We all know that TV ads and such are great, but when you stop paying for them to be aired, the phone suddenly stops too.