How to convince my company they need SEO

First of all, everything in that list other than the image stuff and linking has nothing at all to do with SEO. Meta tags, keywords, and descriptions are totally useless.

I have no idea what "global position is 7,000,000" means. Sounds like you are using some silly useless SEO evaluation.

To convince them that they need SEO, there are two simple ways to do it. One is to pull up examples of competitors, what they are doing, and the potential traffic they are getting.

Second way is to get them to run an AdWords campaign. If nobody is looking for them for relevant keywords, like they think, then the campaign won't cost them a thing because they will get zero clicks.

Ask them if they have all the new customers they would like?

If they say yes then give it up - they won't bother with SEO

If they say no then ask them why they would turn down getting more from the web?

Truth is not every business needs to rank.

I guess more than anything, I'm trying to figure out why you need to convince your company of the importance of SEO at all. Will you make more money by doing it? If not, why waste your time and energy beating a dead horse? In a worst case scenario, you are becoming annoying to them.

I disagree about the description and keywords not having value. The description is used in the snippet, so when someone types in the or searches for their site in some other way, it will be nicely categorized for them. It's a service to the customer, in that sense. The description and keywords are a factor for the search engines, even if just small ones. They describe what the site is about, in their own way. It more accurately defines who they are than 'guessing' by who links to them and such.

Maybe you could offer to look at Google Webmaster tools and see what Google sees wrong with the site. It would be free.

Don't pitch it to them that it's for "new customers" and "free traffic" >> there's so many arguments against this that it's deprecated the value of the entire SEO industry.

SEO as a whole, is more than just about being first on search engines. Put yourself into what I'm assuming is their sales orientated mindset and find the value proposition of SEO exterior to what they're saying. Case a scenario and pitch it to them with responses. Some examples to pitch in response would be:


- we are a niche business; does not matter if we show up on Google search
- if they are looking for our type of services they look at specialty publications/site/conferences to find companies not by searching Google
-our clients/customers are not using Google to find us, they just type our name directly to go to our site

Ok, so a lead with intent goes to a conference, runs into our business. They forget who we are but they remember certain details about us.

This isn't questioning the sales skill of the representative, but this it's easy to lose a business card, get a wrong email - what are we doing to stop that leak? What are they going to do?

They can't go back to the conference 2 weeks later but my guess is that they're going search for <service><location><employee><conference>. The truth is, what's happening is we're educating people but not giving them every opportunity to signal back to us.

The least we could do is revise some copy and do some basic content to build authority. This content can be repurposed in sales pitches to prospects.


- we don't care if we show up in organic search since don't cater to end client

It's not just end clients searching. We can use SEO and content to validate our customers influence to their end clients by facilitating trust. This is about retention through SEO not just appearing page 1 of google. We're a business that's operating for how long, and people (end clients and our clients) don't know. Why?


- we are a niche business; does not matter if we show up on Google search

SEO isn't just about ranking page one, this is leading into the site speed and relevant to the user experience of our site. The better the experience, the easier it is for us to trigger them to make an emotionally activated and well informed decision for us to close them on. This is breaking deep into SPIN selling and we're not degrading the quality of support we provide to our existing customers.


I'm basing these responses on the presumption that they're sales/business orientated (like most of the world). Competitor research may not be the best way to pitch it, but if they can see the value with zero competition - I'd say that's way more powerful in the thought process of "don't be a sheep, be a shepherd" mentality.

Happy to help where we can. But start at benefits if they're not convinced. They will disregard the data if they don't think it's beneficial.

Find out your opponent and analyze their website. compare your site with them and show that how good they are doing with the help of SEO.

It is good that without SEO your company get business but try to show them that if without SEO we are doing good, with SEO we can go far better than competitors.

Ask them that they don't want to grow their business in this competitive world?

having a website is the common thing, but to be found on the first page is the great thing.

Tell them the market size on the internet related their services, show them high volume keywords and how much they are grabbing from it.

1. It's not a ranking factor.

2. A lot of the time, Google won't use the description you have chosen anyhow.

3. Leave it blank and Google will choose what they feel is the most relevant snippet of your content, which actually could attract a lot more clicks than your chosen description. A page can rank for hundreds of keywords, many of which you would never think of. I would rather let Google try to pull a description that matches the search query.

Since I do not know your industry and numbers for it, I'll make up a scenario.

Immediate value of 1 new client= $100. Lifetime value of 1 new client = $500.
That is, owner of the company thinks their immediate net profit is $100; lifetime is $500.

You tell them there are 100 searches a month for what they sell and, if at top of searches, they get 50 of those searchers to visit the site.

So what?

Does the site convert? (They did not ask you to evaluate that; you did not say it does and how well.)

For my example, the site converts 10 of those 50... And the sales people convert 5 of those 10 into buyers. So, each month, SEO gets them 5 sales or $500 immediate profit and $2,500 over time.

In theory, SEO that costs $499.99 a month is profitable. In real life, people put emotion into math so, for some companies the SEO that gets them $500 immediate and $2500 over 3 or 7 years can cost as much as $100/month while others are going to say $230 or $178 or $53.71.

The point I'm making: you need to know
how many searches overall,
how many you're likely to get if you make it to #1 or #10,
how many of them will end on your site,
how many will call/contact,
how many will buy,
and what is the value of a client to your bosses.

Long ago, before Google put ads at the top of pages,
#1 got some 30% of all searches,
#2 got 12%
#3 got 8%

and each spot lower got about 1.25% less than the one above, with the exception of #10, which got about that much more than #9 (presumably because being the last item on the page it was easier to notice).

If you end up ranking on page 1 for a bunch of keywords, you'll get at least as many visitors from random phrases (phrases that don't show up in Google adwords planner as possible keywords, phrases you'd have never thought of on your own but still make sense and some that do not). It's just that each phrase will have been used by only one or two people that month in the whole of your area/country.

The thing is, you should be able to say, SEO will cost you $100 and will bring you $1000 on average. In real life, people like to hear the steps in-between the $100 out and $1000 in, so you need the numbers of all conversion points.

SEO is not anymore an option for a business; it is a must. You tell them that.
If they want to keep up or to be on top of SERP then they need to compete for it and the only way to do that is to do SEO.

Most of the business that are targeting local and general has its own website so you need to optimize it to tell the search engines that your site is what the users need. Because every websites do not walk by its own so that we need to guide them to provide for the users.