Is It Worth Paying an SEO Company?
Sometimes it is not. That is a real answer rather than false modesty. This page sets out when before it sets out anything else. We are an agency, so a page arguing yes throughout would confirm exactly what you already suspect about us.
Sometimes It Is Not
For a meaningful number of businesses, paying for search work is the wrong decision. Not a smaller version of the right decision. The wrong one, where the money would do more elsewhere or should not be spent at all.
Why that is worth saying first. The alternative is not credible.
A page written by an agency that concludes yes in every circumstance is a sales page with a question mark in the title. You would be right to stop reading it. Most people do.
What this page is actually for. Deciding, not being convinced.
It sets out where the answer is no, what should come first, what the money buys and how to do the arithmetic yourself. Whether that adds up is your calculation rather than ours.
What follows. The no case first.
Block two is the full set of situations where you should not buy this. It is longer than most agencies would be comfortable publishing.
When It Is Probably Not Worth It
Four situations. If you recognise your business in any of them, the sensible answer is not yet, else not at all.
You have no capacity to serve more customers. The most overlooked.
If you are already turning work away or booked months ahead, more enquiries produce more declining rather than more revenue. Raising prices or expanding capacity comes first. Either might remove the need entirely.
Almost nobody searches for what you do. The structural one.
Some products and services genuinely have very little search demand, either because they are new or because customers find them another way. Work aimed at demand that does not exist produces nothing however well it is done.
You need sales this month. A timing mismatch.
This work does not produce quickly. A business that needs revenue within weeks needs something that produces revenue within weeks. Advertising, direct approaches or existing customers will serve better. Buying this instead is buying the wrong instrument.
The business proposition is the problem. The uncomfortable one.
If people find you and do not buy, the issue is not visibility. Being found more often by people who then leave multiplies a problem rather than solving it. This is also the situation most likely to be sold to anyway.
What all four have in common. More visibility is not the constraint.
In each case something else is limiting the business. Search work aimed past a binding constraint achieves nothing regardless of quality.
When Something Else Comes First
Three things that should be working before you spend anything on being found more often. None is expensive and each makes the search spend worth more if you do go ahead.
A working way to convert an enquiry. The commonest gap.
Somebody has to answer the telephone, reply to the form and follow up when people do not respond. Businesses lose more enquiries to slow replies than to any visibility problem. Fixing that costs nothing.
Something that distinguishes you. The harder one.
If a visitor cannot tell why you rather than the next result, more visitors will not help. That is a positioning question rather than a search one. It has to be answered by the business.
A site that works when somebody arrives. The basics.
Clear about what you do, easy to contact, functional on a telephone. Search work sends people to your site. If the site loses them, the work has been wasted at the last step.
Why an agency may not tell you this. It delays the sale.
These are not things an agency gets paid to fix. Pointing them out postpones a contract. That is why they are rarely raised and why hearing them is a reasonable signal about who you are talking to.
What to do about it. In order.
Fix the enquiry handling, settle what makes you different, then consider spending on being found. Reversing that order is expensive.
Where The Money Actually Goes
A monthly fee buys time and output. Not access to anything secret, not a relationship with a search engine and not a technology. Understanding that changes what you should be comparing.
What you are actually buying. Hours of skilled work.
Somebody researching, writing, fixing, checking and deciding what to do next. The fee is essentially the number of hours multiplied by what those people cost, plus the firm's overheads and margin.
Which is why the range is so wide. Different quantities.
A low fee buys a small number of hours or the time of somebody inexperienced. A higher one buys more hours or more senior ones. Our pricing page sets out the bands and publishes our own figures.
What that means for comparing quotes. Ask about time.
Two quotes at similar prices can represent very different amounts of work. Establishing roughly how much time each includes tells you more than any list of deliverables.
The part that vanishes quietly. Thinking time.
Reviewing, deciding and adjusting is the highest value part of the work and the first thing squeezed when a firm is busy. It is also the hardest for you to check.
The Arithmetic
Four inputs, all of which you hold and none of which we can supply. Fill them in with your own figures and the decision stops being instinct.
What one customer is worth. Over their whole relationship.
Not the value of one job. What a customer typically spends with you in total, including repeat work and referrals, less what it costs you to serve them. Businesses routinely understate this by considering only the first transaction.
How many you would need. Straightforward division.
The annual fee divided by what a customer is worth. That produces a number of customers. The whole decision turns on whether that number looks plausible for your business.
Over what period. The input people forget.
The fee is monthly and the return arrives later and unevenly, so the calculation has to run over a period rather than a month. Choosing that period is a judgement about how long you are prepared to fund it.
What proportion of enquiries you convert. The multiplier.
Enquiries are not customers. If you convert a fraction of them, you need proportionally more enquiries. A business that does not know this fraction cannot complete the sum.
What the exercise really tests. Readiness.
A business that cannot fill in those four inputs is not ready to buy this from anybody, because it has no way to tell afterwards whether the money worked. Our measuring performance material covers establishing them.
It Compounds, Which Cuts Both Ways
The return accelerates rather than accumulating evenly. Each month's work makes the previous months worth more, which has two consequences pointing in opposite directions.
Why it accelerates. The work builds on itself.
Pages support each other, a site addressing a subject more completely competes better, then standing accumulates. The tenth month of work lands on a stronger position than the first did.
The consequence that argues against buying. A short horizon.
If you might sell the business, close it or change direction within a year, the shape works against you. You would pay for the expensive early part and never reach the part where it pays.
The consequence that argues for it. A long one.
A business intending to be trading in five years is buying something that improves while it continues rather than resetting whenever spending pauses. Very few marketing options behave that way.
What stopping early costs. More than the months saved.
Stopping partway means paying for the slow part and abandoning the compounding. That is worse than never starting. It is why the commitment question matters more here than the monthly figure.
What we will not give you. A period.
No timescale appears anywhere on this page, because nothing supports one and any number would be invented to reassure you.
Doing It Yourself
A small local business with some time available can get a long way without paying anybody. This is not a token concession and it is worth taking seriously before spending.
Your business profile. The single highest return item.
Completing it properly, keeping it current and adding photographs costs nothing and matters enormously for a local business. Nobody should be charging you much for this.
Reviews. Free and mostly unclaimed.
Asking customers consistently is a habit rather than a project. Most businesses do it sporadically. Doing it systematically outperforms a great deal of paid work.
The obvious content. Where you know more than any agency.
Answering the questions customers actually ask you. You already know what those are, which is the hardest part of the job. The writing does not have to be polished to work.
Where it stops. The limits of alone.
Competitive markets, larger sites and technical problems need more than time. Our small business budget page covers where the line usually falls.
The Cheapest Option Is Usually The Most Expensive
A sceptical buyer reasonably tries the cheapest option to see whether any of this works. That instinct is understandable and it is how businesses acquire problems that cost more to remove than the fee saved.
Why very low fees cannot work. Arithmetic again.
If a fee is below the cost of a few hours of skilled time, it is not buying skilled time. Something else is being supplied. Block four explains that the fee is essentially hours multiplied by cost.
What it usually buys. Volume without judgement.
Automated or bulk output produced at scale for many clients. It is not necessarily malicious and it is rarely the product of anybody deciding what your business specifically needs.
Why it can cost more than it saves. Removal.
Some of what cheap arrangements produce has to be undone afterwards. Undoing is skilled work charged at normal rates. Our risky practices material covers what falls into that category.
The other cost. The conclusion you draw.
A business that tries the cheapest option, sees nothing and concludes the whole thing is a waste has bought a false answer to an important question.
What to do instead. Less, properly.
A smaller amount of work done well beats a larger amount done cheaply. Narrowing the scope is a better response to a limited budget than lowering the standard.
What We Would Say To A Business That Should Not Buy
We turn work down when the arithmetic does not support it. That is a claim about our own conduct, so here is what the conversation actually sounds like, which makes it something you can test.
What we ask early. The four inputs.
What a customer is worth, how many you could handle, what you currently convert and how long you are prepared to fund it. Those come before anything about the work, because they decide whether the work is sensible.
What we say when it does not add up. Plainly.
That the number of customers required looks implausible for your business, that you have no capacity for them, else that something else would produce more. That is not a negotiating position and there is no smaller package offered afterwards.
What we say when something else comes first. Go and do that.
If the enquiry handling loses people or the site cannot convert, we say so and suggest coming back afterwards. Some businesses do and some do not. Both are reasonable.
How you can test this. Bring us a bad case.
If your situation resembles block two, say so and see what happens. An agency that finds a way to sell to a business it should have declined has told you what it is.
Why we publish this. It is checkable.
A claim you can verify in one conversation is worth more than any assurance about our standards. The full series is on the hiring an SEO agency guide.
Bring us
a bad
case.
If your situation resembles block two, tell us and see what happens. We ask what a customer is worth, how many you could handle and how long you would fund it before discussing any work, because those decide whether the work is sensible at all.
What we commit to in writing:
Our prices are published rather than quoted on request, so you can compare us against anybody else before speaking to us.
Every guide.
One practice.
What an agency is, whether to buy at all, which model suits you, how to vet one, what things cost, what should be in a contract and how to work with them afterwards.
