What is the ugly truth about SEO? Almost all business owners, including solicitors and law firm partners I have spoken to in the past seven months, seem interested in SEO services, and getting organic traffic is something everyone wants for their businesses.
However, committing to an SEO service and getting results is a totally different thing that most business owners won’t admit.
But why?
Because of the ugly truth about SEO.
Let me list them one by one.
A very common impression about SEO services is that they are expensive. To be honest, SEO services are not cheap. The price usually ranges from €500 up to €5000 per month, depending on the size of a website, geographic location, the industry’s competitiveness, and the client’s specific goal.
But let’s be real. There is no cheap digital marketing service. If you pay someone to do a cheap service, you probably will get cheap results in the end. You pay for what you get. That is the truth.
Go back to SEO service; a website with hundreds of pages is definitely a lot more expensive than a small website with 10 pages.
Another example: the legal industry is much more competitive than the pet care industry. A law firm’s SEO service price will be much higher than a pet care service because it involves more work to compete with a lot others in the industry. We will have to work much harder to deliver the results.
An SEO service for Dublin City will be more expensive than Kilkenny City, for example. The same thing applies: Major capitals like Dublin and London are much more competitive than other small cities, so it will require a lot more hard work and longer time to deliver results. Or check out the local SEO page for more information.
Image this: A drink driving solicitor wants to rank a keyword: “Best drink driving solicitor in Dublin or London”, but there are 10 other drink driving solicitors trying to rank the same keyword as well. The competition is very intense for the same keyword, it will definitely take a lot of more effort and time to outrank 10 other drink driving solicitors in the area.
I know, you may feel you do not have the patience to wait for SEO to take effect. I feel you. But, you really need patience to see SEO results. Otherwise, you will be frustrated, pressing your SEO service provider every day to show you the results. Do not do that after you read this blog. By the time you read it to the end, you will know better about SEO and what to expect from an SEO service.
SEO has a long-lasting effects. Your effort pays off in the end, and you will get free traffic and conversions.
How long does it take to see the SEO service results? It really depends on the conditions of your website. For example, if your website is at least 3 years old and has some organic traffic coming into your site, you might not need to wait for a year to see the results. There are many other factors to consider before we can predict how long it will take before to see the results.
If you think a one-off SEO service can bring you long-lasting effects, you are very wrong there. SEO is a long term marketing strategy, and only consistently applying an SEO strategy to your website will bring you long lasting results.
We must look at SEO with a holistic approach. No one thing that guarantees your website will rank no. 1 on Google search results.
You won’t see sustainable results in 2 months, 6 months, a year, or even two years. I know this may put you off, but this is the ugly truth. SEO takes a long time to see results, but the results last longer, too.
If you depend only on SEO to get your organic traffic and leads, you are playing a very dangerous game. You are limiting yourself to acquiring more traffic from other channels, such as social media marketing, email marketing, content marketing, and even ads.
If your marketing strategy depends only on one channel, you are not building a sustainable business. For instance, many law firms rely solely on referrals.
I have seen many websites ranking no 1 or top 5, but have no sales and conversions.
How do I know that? I was asked to audit a website that is ranking no 1 on the first page. The owner asked me to audit his website and let him know why he has no sales. He has an organic traffic of 570 visitors per month for his niche. Unfortunately, he only got a few sales from the 570 visitors.
This is what I meant by ranking no 1 does not mean more conversions.
The search engine algorithm is constantly changing. For instance, the recent algorithm update in March 2024 focused on the quality of content and user experience.
The SEO strategies we used a few months ago probably won’t work for now.
Keeping up with these changes requires constant vigilance and adaptation, driven by the need for user experiences and manipulative SEO practices.
Such complexity of SEO strategies does not always apply to all businesses. Solicitors and law firms, which are professional services, can benefit from SEO services to eventually build a free organic pipeline that produces leads 24/7 for their firm business.
That is the ultimate goal of SEO for solicitors and law firms investing in SEO in the first place.
Another reason why SEO is not always guaranteed to work is competitiveness.
When you launch an SEO campaign, you are more likely to compete with everyone worldwide, including the world’s prominent websites, such as Amazon, HubSpot, etc. Unless your campaign targets a specific area, we call that local SEO.
This intense competition can make it particularly tough for smaller or new law firms to achieve high rankings despite the legal sector’s existing intense competitiveness.
Additionally, focusing excessively on competitors’ SEO tactics can lead to a lack of innovation and creativity in your strategies, potentially stalling distinctiveness and growth.
The risk of inadvertently mimicking competitors’ approaches can also undermine a brand’s uniqueness and authority in its niche.
Ultimately, we have no control over how algorithm updates impacts our websites each time. Solicitors use SEO services must recognize the challenges and embrace the dynamic nature of SEO which can lead to creativity in SEO strategies, and focus on sustainable and efficient long term growth.
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