Growth Agency in the UAE, UK, USA & AUS

Should I Hire a SEO Agency for my Business?

Written by Toni Becker | August 05, 2020

If you are a business owner you have definitely heard about Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), one of the most traditional forms of digital marketing.  However, as we adjust to the world in the time of COVID-19, you may be questioning where you should be spending your marketing budget, with such a saturated internet environment these days, you may be wondering if SEO is really worth the investment or whether it can show a tangible return for your business. 

We're clearly biased, but in our opinion, the answer is a resounding "yes"!  But to fully understand the reasons why, much of your decision should be based on how important it is for your business to rank well (ie at the top of page 1) of Google search engine results for searches that are relevant to your business (ie your products and services). 

However, as a business professional, you're probably wondering what the actual value of ranking well is.  You need to know how much this is worth and how much SEO can actually benefit your business. In short, you need to know how much SEO is worth in cold hard cash!  

At Nexa, we believe that Search Engine Optimisation (or what we prefer to call “Search Engine Ownership” ) is one of the most valuable assets for any business, and we are here to show you why we believe this. 

Is your Website Visible Online?

It's important for businesses like ours to practice what we preach.  After all, why would you trust an agency to look after an area of your business that they neglect for theirs.  That's why, for the purpose of this article, we will take you through Nexa's very own, personal case study.  We won't share details or data from successful client case studies (btw, we have plenty of award winning examples), but rather our very own, actual data. 

But before we start some good context for your business would be to see exactly where your website currently ranks on Google.  Search for the products and services that your business offers and keep a note of these.  Mark down where your website currently ranks.  (Page 1, position 1 should be your objective).  If you can't find your website within the first 3 pages of Google, stop searching.  It's likely that your customers won't look that far down the rankings, so there's little point in you doing the same.

Studies have shown that 91.5% of searchers do not go past the first page of the search results and over 30% of users will click on the first website in the search results.  So, if you cannot find your website online, you are passing business over to your competitors and losing out on valuable leads in the process. It is SEO that has the power to change this, but it is not enough to tell you that this will benefit your business, we want to show you just how much strong SEO is actually worth

Search Visibility is a metric you should really care about

Before we get into the numbers, it is important we explain what search visibility is and how it is measured. 

Search Visibility refers to the percentage of clicks that a website is expected to receive, based on organic ranking positions across all the keywords relevant for a business.

Your Search Visibility is calculated by:

  • Looking at the rankings of your website for all your keywords or key-phrases
  • Calculating an estimated Click Through Rate (CTR) that is based on your individual keyword rankings. 
  • Adding your CTRs and dividing the number of keywords. This will give you a single metric of 0-100%. 

If your search visibility score is at 0%, your website pages are not anywhere in the top 50 search results for your relevant keywords and your expected traffic is virtually zero, while a score of 100% means that for all searches related to your business, you're likely to receive a click for every single one of those.  The latter is incredibly difficult to achieve for any business (probably impossible).

Knowing your search visibility is important for the progression of your SEO campaign and helps you see how well your strategy is working. It is also important to compare your search visibility to those of your competitors as this provides greater insight into what you need to do to achieve higher rankings and how much your SEO is actually worth. The goal of any SEO campaign should be to see your page rank higher than any possible competitor, bringing industry targeted traffic straight through to your business, and yours alone. 

Case Study: Nexa

Why did we choose Nexa to demonstrate the value of SEO and why you should consider this approach for your business?

  • We're in a highly competitive industry (digital marketing).
  • We have over 400 competitors locally that not only offer the same services but actually offer SEO as a product / service to their clients.
  • We have employed our very unique SEO (Search Engine Ownership) strategy for almost 6 years and therefore, is as tried and tested as you can possible get!

In short, there is no tougher industry to look at than SEO itself.  If we fail to rank well, we probably shouldn't offer it as a service to others.

The Nexa Case Study:  The below is based on data from June 2020 and July 2020

  • Search Visibility: From a set of 400 keywords and key-phrases, all based on Nexa’s service offerings, we have reached a search visibility score of 75.1% for laptop and desktop users and we have reached 75.9% search visibility for mobile searches.

    To put this into perspective, for any of our 400 keywords and key-phrases, we are likely to convert 75% of searches using these words into website traffic
  • Comparing Competitor Visibility:  Using the same data, keywords and keyphrases, our closest competitor’s search visibility score is at 33.7%.  But how does this relate to traffic? During June 2020, our organic search visibility drove 7,469 users to our website - this means that we achieved this number of visitors for FREE and through SEO alone.  Our closest competitor received only 2,453 visitors in the same time period. This means that Nexa received 3x more visits than our closest competitor due to our high rankings in the search results.
     
  • The Financial Value of Nexa's SEO:  We have calculated what all of the above means in monetary terms and this is where the value of SEO speaks for itself. We asked ourselves what it would cost a new competitor to generate the same amount of traffic that we have been generating so that we can calculate the value of our SEO.  Based on Google data, for the same keywords and keyphrases our competitors would have to spend $7.20 per click through to their website using AdWords (paid Google advertising to get them to the top of the search results) and this equates to US$ 53,086 for a single month. This means that a new competitor would have to spend that amount of money every single month to achieve the same traffic that we receive for FREE.   That's the equivalent of $637,032 per year.

Website traffic is not the only determining factor in the value of Nexa’s SEO because this traffic converts into high quality leads and if we had to convert even 1% of these leads into new customers, then the actual Return on Investment becomes even more valuable, adding to the value of our SEO activity.

But SEO isn't a static metric.  The data above is for June 2020.  If we look at how that data changes month by month, the numbers can be dramatic.  Here's what July 2020 looked like for Nexa:

From our list of 400 keywords, 341 of these drove traffic to our website in July.  Monthly website visits increased from 7,469 in June to 8,896 in July.  How does this equate to actual value? Well, despite the average cost per click reduced from $7.20 to $7.13, the actual value of this additional traffic generated means that the overall value of our organic traffic increased from $53,086 to $56,400 for the month.

So, how much is SEO worth to your business? 

The results from the above case study speak for themselves and we're incredibly proud to stand strong ahead of others but it's clear that you understand that this hasn't been an overnight success story.  Our SEO strategy has taken time and taken commitment. There were times (especially in the early days) where even we questioned the validity of our strategy.  But we persevered and it's fair to say that our hard work is paying off.  Does that mean we stop now?  Absolutely not.  Now we double down on our efforts to create an even bigger gap.

At Nexa, we are here to help you not only optimise your website, but we are here to ensure that you OWN the search engine results. Search Engine Ownership is the way forward in SEO, and we are leading the way. 

If you are looking to implement SEO for your business,  and you are looking to own the search results, Nexa is here to help. Contact us today for all your Search Engine Optimisation requirements and get ranking.