5.5 Reasons why the Slumping Economy is Good for SEO

When the economy goes into recession, a good many business owners tighten their wallets and get ready to weather the storm (and for good reason).  Often times, the first thing to get cut from the budget is advertising.

But strangely, my Search Engine Optimization business has really taken off lately. So I started asking myself “why?“.

It seems SEO is different from regular advertising in many ways.  Good SEO just works in a down economy where other types of direct advertising fail. Let’s take a look at..

5.5 reasons why SEO is the choice a lot of business owners invest in while pulling back the reins on traditional advertising.

1.  Track your EXACT Return on Investment (ROI)

Traditional advertising is a “throw it against the wall and see what sticks”.  I don’t know about you, but that isn’t the way I want to spend my advertising dollars when every penny counts.

Search Engine Optimization is different.  With SEO, you can literally track almost every aspect of how you were found, the keywords that were used, and even if they eventually purchased something from you.  With that knowledge, you can continually improve your strategy to jive with the market.  Try doing that with traditional advertising.

2.  One-Time Investment Vs. “The Constant Money Drain”

Most advertising requires you keep paying to reap the benefits.  In Pay Per Click advertising, you have to keep paying for each click to keep getting customers.  In traditional advertising, just skipping a month of that magazine ad can slow your business.  But SEO is different.

Search Engine Optimization overhauls are done once and keep paying dividends for years.  You invest in doing this once, and you’ll be getting customers generated from Search Engine traffic without having to pay a penny.

When every penny counts in a slumping economy, many entrepreneurs and business owners are looking for a way to invest now and reap the benefits throughout the slump.

3.  Hone your Message

You have to have a lot of trust in your designer before your ad goes to print.  Because if Mr. Designer screws something up, you just wasted a lot of money for a bad impression in that industry magazine.  And you don’t get another chance until next month… next quarter… or next year.

SEO is more forgiving.  Internet marketing is more flexible.  If your customers aren’t responding to your ads… re-write them on the fly.  Change your direction instantly, create a new service in days, and get it all to market with the click of a button.

Traditional advertising is a gamble compared to SEO and Internet marketing.  Would you prefer to roll the dice or study your ROI?

4.  Nimble Companies are doing SEO to stay ahead of their competitors.  Are you Nimble?

Search Engines aren’t going anywhere…  The internet is only becoming more popular…  People are looking to the net to making a buying decision…

You’re going to have to optimize for the Search Engines sooner or later.

If you optimize before your competitors, you’ll have the competitive advantage.  It will be your company getting the write-ups, getting the links, and getting the sales.  In other words, you are going to have to invest in this sometime, and with SEO sooner is always better than later.

The earlier you are to optimize for the search engines, the higher your site will be in the SERPS (Search Engine Results Page).  The results at the top tend to stay there because they are continually getting mentions, links, and conversation since they are at the top.  It’s the old: “The rich stay rich” situation… and in this case you want to be on top if you want to be (or stay) link-rich.

5.  Inexpensive relative to other advertising methods

Search Engine Optimization and Social Media Optimization are acutally darn cheap compared to Traditional Media.  They are especially valuable when you consider that they usually target a more select group of people, or demographic, than a more traditional “shotgun” approach to marketing.

(More specific audience = more tailored message = more sales / lead ) = you driving a porsche instead of riding the bus.

And you don’t have to take my word for it.  Find out yourself… you can track it all down to the penny (see Point 2 above).

5.5 Help people find you who are looking for you, instead of convincing them to buy… the Big Target idea….

In a slumping economy your clients are closing up their wallets and aren’t responding to “buy this” advertising like they do in a dynamite economy.  So what is an entrepreneur to do?

Well, I suggest becoming a Big Target.

Instead of hunting for your customers: Cold Calling, Direct Mail, TV Commercials…

Become the biggest target around.  So when someone is looking for “Car Insurance in Columbus” you are the place they come to because they found your site in Google.  It is a heck of a lot cheaper and easier to be in the right place at the right time then to convince prospects to buy something they don’t want.

SEO won’t go out and sell your product, but it can help you to be there when your potential clients start looking for the product you offer.  And that’s smart when people are buying less and shunning the “Buy This” sales your competitors will be doing as a last ditch effort.

photo credit: twenty_questions

What do you think?  Has the slumping economy been good for your SEO business?  Or if you are a business owner or marketing exec, have you been thinking about shifting your budget to SEO?

Update: It turns out I’m not the only blogger out there talking about How the Economy Affects SEO.  Check out some alternative points of view here:

• Firefly SEO on “Does an Economic Meltdown Spell Disaster for SEO?”