A little more than a year ago I researched, analyzed and then developed a custom quote for a natural search engine optimization campaign. This quote was for a mid-sized company in the highly competitive software marketplace. During my research I discovered that most of the top ranked sites either have full time SEO staff or outsource their natural search campaign to an Internet marketing agency like WebMetro. While I developed a well documented and comprehensive proposal, the company selected another Internet marketing agency for the campaign.
This past week I heard back from that same company where I quoted the SEO campaign almost 12 months ago. While I was happy to hear from my contact, I wasn’t surprised. He called me about 6 months ago asking me questions that his first Internet marketing agency would not disclose.
In between this time, the company terminated their natural search campaign with the first agency and recently gave notice to the second agency. My contact, a marketing communications manager was frustrated. It had been a year of disappointment. While a few organic rankings improved, neither campaign yielded a positive ROI.
Well Documented and Comprehensive Proposal
In confidence he explained that while he found WebMetro presented a well documented and comprehensive proposal, his company selected the other companies because of price. He further explained that the prevailing opinion at the company was search engine optimization is a commodity and now they are realizing the mistake.
$0.11 more per hour per keyword
According to the marketing communications manager our proposal was about 15% higher than all of the other natural search proposals they received. I looked back and found I quoted him $3,000 a month for an SEO campaign that included on-page optimization, off-page optimization and a paid inclusion campaign for Yahoo.
In doing the math - 15% is about $450 a month. On the surface $450 a month sounds like a lot of money, particularly when annualized. However, this really equates to $22 more a day, $2.81 more an hour or about $0.11 more per hour per keyword.
Competitive Research and Analysis
During my research and analysis, I referenced some very expensive tools from Hitwise and eMarketer. This data gave me insight not only into the market, but also specific competitors. My work found that a couple of the competitors were buying media to help supplement organic traffic. In fact I was able to explain that one competitor was receiving 28% of their traffic from paid search and 50% from organic traffic. Of the organic traffic, Google represented 60% and Yahoo 28%. Researching Yahoo further, I found that only 1 competitor in the top 10 was employing SSP (paid inclusion for Yahoo), providing a great opportunity to secure quick rankings on Yahoo.
Business Strategy
As part of my original strategy, I proposed we concentrate on a core set of keywords for the first 3 months of the campaign. By deliberately concentrating on a core set instead of all the keywords, the campaign is better positioned to produce rankings for these high valued keywords thereby producing an immediate and high ROI. Due to my initial competitive research and analysis, I also recommended SSP Submit Pro as a strategy to obtain rankings fast on Yahoo and capture a share of the 28% market traffic. It turns out the other two companies did not consider ROI as part of their strategy nor did the other companies offer SSP. Instead these other two companies did their best to get the site well ranked – but without aligning the business strategy, it clearly made the campaign that much more challenging.
Near the end of my conversation with the marketing communications manager he asked for a new proposal. I smiled and said yes realizing he finally understood that you get what you pay for – even if it is just $0.11 more per hour per keyword.