Two weeks gone, I attended an SEM seminar in which the presenter attempted to show that employing an SEO consulting service would deliver increasing profitability. He meant that over time the divergence between the price of his services and your sales would expand so that SEO started to become increasingly profitable.

Naturally, his sales pitch was that it would therefore be an excellent investment for you to use his firm. On the other hand, with small business training you might find out how to do it by yourself.

Spreading the Myths

The presenter showed us a very convincing graph. His example was a firm only starting out with search engine optimisation and hiring an SEO agency. He set out the agency cost to the client at $1000 per month for 12 months. On his graph, this represented a straight line.

Now he graphed out the sales that would arisefrom this SEO input, i.e., getting the website ranked on Google’s page one. At first, sales value was 0. Within three months, the two lines on the graph had met up. Then, sales income began and continued to rise well above the static cost line. QED: great SEO scalability and escalating profits.

But he didn’t end there. He argued that once his SEO consultancy service had established the website in the top rankings, the client could start cutting her outlay on SEO. Hence, the straight cost line would fall while sales kept on rising or at a minimum stay static. So, a professionally run SEO strategy could turn out to be even more scalable.

Facing the True Situation

Of course, this is possible if you have big bucks and/or a major brand. But it is highly unlikely for the average business. That is particularly true where budgets are constrained and where markets are very competitive. Getting decent rankings for good keywords isn’t simple. And even though you might spend the serious cash there’s still no certainty that with SEO you would ever make first page rankings, let alone stay there.

Actually the truth is that his example customer might have spent her $12,000 and got little or nothing in exchange.

What’s more, the first page itself is rarely enough. You actually need to rank in the top 3. In most cases, these grab around 2/3rds of clicks, with #1 getting above 40%.

The true situation for most companies just launching SEO, even though they’re using an agency, is should they do get first page rankings it’s likely to be for the low volume, less competitive keywords. And to reach that essential top three could be a long and slog.

Hence, getting high volume sales from an SEO consulting service might be a limited and certainly long term prospect. Before buying SEO consuting services. bear all this in mind.

Tom Wilson is an SEO Glasgow expert. For over a , he has been providing internet marketing and Pay per click to a wide range of firms. Visit his website for more in-depth information on his PPC management services.