Is it a recession or a depression? It’s getting hard to tell. Each day brings more stories about companies laying off thousands, budgets getting slashed and even Forrester Research saying that IT spending for 2009 will be anemic. That’s why it may be surprising to hear that amongst all of this bad news that SEO spending is keeping pace and in some cases increasing despite the downtrodden economy. What makes SEO immune from the downturn? Could it be that SEO has a proven track record of getting return on investment, or is it just a safe haven to invest in during troubled times? Let’s look at some of the top reasons SEO continues to be funded in this rough economy:
SEO is no longer voo-doo witchcraft.
How many times over the years have we heard people say that search engine optimization is nothing but smoke and mirrors and does nothing to help rank? Well someone must have forgot to tell Google, Microsoft and Yahoo that because they are all releasing SEO guidelines to help websites better structure their pages for indexing. If the big guys are endorsing it, well, that pretty much says it all.
Retooling is taking place in many companies
When times get tough, many companies look to retool and search for ways to maximize their ROI, reduce expenses and drive more business through their online presence. SEO is one of the areas that has a proven track record of ROI.
The numbers make the case for you.
All one has to do is look at the analytical reports of visitors and traffic to see that search engines are driving a lot of business nowadays. Again, it’s hard to cut funding when the amount of “free” traffic beating a path to your virtual door is more than making up for the expense of SEO.
Paid search is losing its luster – and it costs!
Why pay for something you can get for free? Just think about it – when is the last time you clicked on an ad when doing search? I know that it has been a long time since I clicked on an ad of any sort. People are so saturated with ads that research shows most of them ignore them and focus strictly on the organic search results.
Marketing is looking for a magic bullet.
When the marketing folks sit around with their thinking caps on trying to figure out how to drive more traffic to the online sites SEO naturally tops their list of ideas. SEO is even on the minds of marketers nowadays, once again verifying its true legitimacy.
Search continues along, no matter what the stock market does.
The fact of the matter is that the stock market could tank tomorrow and Google would go on delivering the same amount of search results as it did the day before. People need information and they turn to their favorite search engine to find it – SEO helps you make sure that your information is at the top of the list!
Wed, Dec 10, 2008
Business Tactics