While SEO is a valuable marketing tactic that has been around for well over two decades, it often fails to get the same attention as other digital marketing methods. There are a lot of misconceptions out there about SEO being a “pie in the sky” tactic that doesn’t add much value to the marketing campaign.

This couldn’t be further from the truth. First of all, SEO wouldn’t have survived all the advances in digital marketing over the years if it wasn’t a legitimate marketing approach. But, to truly recognise the value of SEO, it’s important to only use “white hat” SEO strategies, and that means letting go of keyword stuffing, over-optimising anchor text and overdoing keyword density.

Luckily, a growing number of business owners are starting to recognise the value of SEO abut that doesn’t always mean that they’re willing to put their money where their mouth is. A lot of them place SEO marketing on the back burner when putting together their website advertising budget.

In this article, we will prove the value of SEO to you, and the good news is that we now have enough data to do just that. Depending on your marketing goals, you may use SEO to optimise your app store, the technical aspect of your website, content marketing and local search.

But, to get these results you need to make progress in performance and the following top ways to prove SEO value will help you achieve just that.

  1. Have a Testing Budget

Perhaps the easiest way to prove that SEO has value is have a small test budget. People are always willing to try something new if they perceive the initial costs to be low.

Once you have an SEO budget, get impressive results so you understand that with a higher budget you might be able to achieve even more.

Of course, it takes time for SEO to show results but even with a small budget, it’s possible to produce incremental wins and improve ranking performance.

The first thing you should do is generate five high-quality links to an existing page that doesn’t contain any links despite the fact that it’s already optimised. This will take a few months to achieve and during that time you should make sure to measure your metrics throughout so you can take a look at the before and after rankings in the end.

Hopefully, you will be able to see that the links had a progressive influence on gaining traffic and increasing website visibility on search engines.

You may also perform other tests with off-page tactics and content to improve keywords rankings over time.

  1. Back Up Your Data

We all know that Google Search Console (GSC) is the best way to collect reliable data on clicks and impressions, but it’s not the only way to show results.

You can complement GSC with Ahrefs. This platform comes with features that are geared toward showing ranking improvements, and it can be a great way to see the efforts you’ve made to rank your website.

You can also take a look at the number of keywords that your website is ranking for at present compared to figures from 3 to 6 months ago.

One thing’s for sure; a website with an improved ranking on Google will always experience a correlating increase in traffic and even conversions.

  1. Compare SEO Cost with Paid Search Cost

Next, compare how much it would cost to generate traffic from keywords that you’re not ranking for (paid search), versus using smart SEO methods.

Besides, organic reach is much cheaper than buying keywords in any case.

A great way to assess the value of SEO using this method is to:

  • Evaluate the number of paid search keywords in that category;
  • Find out how often Internet users are searching for these keywords every year;
  • Using CPCs, separate the model into varying market shares as that will help you determine the final cost and value of SEO in percentages.

  1. Show Your Client Competitor Growth

Lastly, show yourself how well your competitors are doing in the SERPs compared to your website. Use third-party tools like SEMrush to monitor competitor growth in a way that will show you the role that SEO plays in growth.

At the end of the day, you, like most people, will be very competitive. You won’t like the idea of being outperformed by your competition and this could be the trigger you need to convince yourself to implement SEO strategies. A few good starting points would include local search and answer box queries.

Once you take a look at the numbers in projected traffic and conversion growth that you could be getting, you will be able to make an easier decision.

Conclusion

As with all good things, SEO is no fly-by-night marketing tactic and it takes time to see results.

This might give you cold feet at first, but if you look at projected growth in ranking, conversions and revenue, you might end up seeing the value of applying SEO to get organic search traffic.

Most times, this means digging deep to monitor results quickly so you can show yourself the opportunities that SEO offers.