Sometimes a client teaches us something new, and sometimes we do the teaching. In this case, we both learned a lot about the reality of long-tail search from Google Analytics.
The owner of our Pennsylvania client, Aluminum Athletic Equipment, was concerned that they weren’t being found when people searched for track hurdles. As it happened, that term wasn’t on the list of targeted terms we were given, so we had to hustle to catch up after the initial optimization was in place. There were dozens of other products on the site…how much could we improve the performance of this one category?
In their market, AAE is well known, even famous. They make quality hurdles, made right here in the USA, and their track and field equipment is used at the Penn Relays as well as in schools across the country. Now that their site is optimized more specifically for track hurdles, there are 150 different “hurdle” search terms sending traffic to their site. College hurdles, practice hurdles, high school hurdles, etc. So, it’s not ONE search term that’s important…it’s ALL the search terms people are using.
How much is SEO going to cost us? Is it in the marketing budget? What’s the ROI?
In 2010, they got 77 quote requests via their web site. This year, they’re on track to break 500…a 550% increase in leads. Cost? About $25K a year for two years.
As the client says, “It was lower than our PPC spending with a significantly higher ROI.”
An optimized site, with new optimized content being developed over time, will show performance improvement for years. So, in what could be a big shift in how you look at your marketing budget, think of SEO as an investment, not an expense. Your website is that important an asset.