Whether it’s a boss or potential client, we’ve all encountered the non-believer — one who questions the importance of SEO or doubts the necessity of investing resources into search engine optimization.
If you have never encountered one of these skeptics, consider yourself lucky; for those who have, quotes from industry studies and promises of top rankings aren’t enough to sway them.
Fortunately, years of experience have taught me a few ways to overcome common objections (e.g., “IT has it covered,” or “We would get that traffic anyway.“) or persuade those with a preference to spend on other channels like SEM or print.
Analytics
Let’s start with the most obvious method of converting non-believers before moving toward less conventional methods. Analytics data sits at both the beginning and eventual end of all arguments for SEO investment.
At the very least, SEO advocates should equip themselves with:
- Year-over-year growth (or decline) in organic traffic and revenue, over time. Organic growth means the brand must protect and maintain its position. Declining organic traffic and revenue means investment is needed to prevent continued loss.
- Organic traffic and revenue’s contribution percentage to total website traffic and revenue. Establish the importance of SEO/organic traffic compared to SEM and direct activity. Try to gauge the level of investment needed in those other channels (particularly SEM) to establish their contribution.
- Referral traffic and revenue. Determine what portion of referral activity is from SEO link building and content distribution efforts. These should be credited to SEO.
- Impact of first-click vs. last-click attribution. Google Analytics makes this comparison relatively easy. Most people credit the channel with the last click as the one that produced the revenue. SEO may introduce consumers to the brand’s site; once familiar, they may navigate directly to the website or enter through an SEM ad triggered by a brand search. Understand how viewing revenue through a first-click attribution model compares to viewing it as last click.
Even with these numbers in hand, some may remain unmoved by the organic channel’s traffic and revenue contribution.
As noted earlier, people may claim that those numbers come from branded traffic the site “would have gotten anyway” or that non-brand organic traffic and revenue are granted purely at the whim of Google.
Google Search Console
Sometimes, getting information straight from the horse’s mouth can help convince decision-makers that SEO warrants investment.
Messages/Warnings
There’s no better evidence that action is required than Google indicating dissatisfaction with your site. Check Messages and/or Manual Actions in Google Search Console—any warnings? Check Crawl > Crawl Errors—is the site full of broken pages? Review Search Appearance > HTML Improvements—any duplicate or missing title tags or meta descriptions?
These fundamental issues, when highlighted by Google, can spur action. This approach is particularly effective for the “IT’s got it covered” pushback line.
SEM Cost Of Clicks
Use the Search Analytics “Queries” report in Google Search Console to retrieve a list of keywords driving clicks over the past 90 days. Export the data to a spreadsheet and remove branded keywords.
What remains will be a list of non-brand keywords that are not attributable to brand searches driven by TV or print campaigns. These are attributable to SEO investment in the past.
Take that list of non-brand keywords and clicks and run them through Google Ads Keyword Planner to get a Suggested Bid. Clicks multiplied by Suggested Bid approximate the value of that SEO traffic if you had paid for it via SEM.
You can make an even stronger case if you refine that list of non-brand keywords down to ones the SEM team gave up on due to poor SEM ROI.
Dissect The SERP
The methods above may have been explored or ignored by the non-believer. Although a numbers-based argument should suffice, sometimes it takes an approach that speaks to the decision-maker on a more visceral level.
Careful analysis of the search engine results pages (SERPs) can be effective in this case.
Branded Search Results
Do a quick search of your brand name—or your CEO’s name—and note the results returned that are not under your company’s control. Viewing negative information or competitor pages on page one of the search results may motivate your non-believer to invest in reputation management (ultimately, an investment in SEO).
Presence Of Local
Many outside of SEO are unaware of how much the SERP has changed recently. A significant number of searches—even those that do not include geographic terms—return a “local pack” and local business listings.
This is particularly true for mobile search. If your brand has a physical presence but hasn’t invested in local optimization, this can reveal a glaring hole in your ability to serve online and offline customers.
Presence Of Answer Boxes
Search Google for a popular question about your products or services. An answer box often dominates the top of the non-paid search results.
Seeing that traditional organic listings have been replaced with optimized question/answer content may lead to an “aha” moment for your non-believer.
Presence Of Influencer Content
Just as local listings and answer boxes have changed SEO activities, the prominence of influencer-based content within organic rankings has also grown.
Conducting a complete SEO campaign now requires forging relationships and distributing content. Even if your website has a good technical foundation and top landing pages are optimized, it’s not time to divert the budget elsewhere.
Competitive Share Of Voice
I’ve worked with many attorneys in the past. One particular client pointed to a competitor at the top of the SERPs and said,
“He’s an idiot. How’s he up there?”
I explained that Google didn’t know his rival was an idiot. All Google knew was that his website had good, optimized content relevant to the search term.
This taught me that, regardless of how logical or numbers-driven non-believers may be, they often have a desire to outdo their competition and dislike seeing someone they feel is unworthy outranking them.
My best advice for getting or maintaining SEO budget is to build a list of non-brand keywords and compile a Google organic share of voice report to show which competitors have the most top listings for those keywords.
Your non-believer is likely to see that “pretenders to the throne” have more visibility than their brand. Playing on competitiveness and ego is often a powerful motivator in securing SEO funding.
It’s no secret that revenue and potential upside figures often secure ongoing SEO budgets. However, some decision-makers may still not believe SEO is a worthy investment.
Hopefully, the advice above will provide you with alternative means to approach these non-believers, secure the necessary budget, and demonstrate the value of the organic channel. What advice or war stories can you share?
