It’s easy for SEO to become something you add on afterwards, instead of being an integrated part of the company. That’s unfortunate, because if you can make search engine optimization part of your operations, you will go much further.
Today, we essentially get customers through three channels: Google Ads, SEO, and recommendations. Of course, we work continuously to broaden our reach, but these three have, from day one, been by far our strongest channels. For example, Google Ads generates as many quote requests in a week as all our social media efforts combined do in a quarter. Now, we’re not (anymore?) a miracle of growth, but we still grew by 19% last year, and that entire growth can be attributed to these three channels.
It’s only natural that SEO and Google Ads drive our sales, since that’s what we specialize in. But you don’t have to be a search engine optimization specialist to achieve solid growth through traffic from search engines. It’s really about assessing where each invested dollar has the most impact—and often, I’d argue, there’s tremendous value per dollar to be found in the right SEO and SEM efforts.
A simple example
You’re about to build a new website. Sometimes, I feel that companies in Sweden rebuild their websites almost continuously—but that’s another discussion. What’s far more common than you’d expect is that SEO considerations aren’t implemented until after the site is finished. The problem is that fixing mistakes afterwards is much harder than making sure things are set up correctly for search engines from the start. And when the web agency says they’re building “SEO-friendly,” that alone isn’t enough.
I’ve seen websites turning over hundreds of millions rolled out with Noindex tags that risked de-indexing the entire site, several times. I’ve seen gaming giants invest heavily in solutions where Google couldn’t read the content at all, simply because they chose a JavaScript setup the search engine couldn’t handle. And these were sites where organic traffic made up a significant portion of revenue.
If they had SEO expertise on board throughout the journey, either in-house or via a strong consultant, this would never have happened. A relaunch could have boosted their search engine rankings instead of destroying them.
At least the marketing department needs SEO knowledge
You don’t need to be a specialist in every aspect of marketing, but there are strong reasons why at least the marketing team should have enough SEO knowledge to recognize when external help is needed.
As in the example above, there are so many times when we wish companies had come to us just a month earlier—it would have been done right from the start, at minimal cost. Instead of locating the mistakes and rebuilding after the fact, once the site’s traffic has already disappeared.
Magnus Bråth
Consultant & Adviser
Magnus is one of the world's most prominent search marketing specialists and primarily works with management and strategy at his agency Brath AB.