How to Convince Your Boss to Do SEO: Objection 4: "SEO will take too long."

Table of Contents:
How to Convince Your Boss to Do SEO

1. Objection 1: What is SEO?
2. Objection 2: SEO is a scam.
3. Objection 3: We can’t afford SEO!
4. Objection 4: It will take too long.
5. Objection 5: SEO won’t give us the results we want.
6. Objection 6: But we’re already ranking well.
7. Objection 7: Why do you need help?

The thing is, they’re not exactly wrong. SEO won’t push you to the #1 spot overnight, and it can’t instantly make you thousands of dollars in profit. But what it can do is provide you with an ongoing, consistent increase in your online visibility that directly leads to more clicks, more leads, and more purchases.

Focus on the Quick Wins

Having said all this, there are more than likely ways you can improve your SEO to see fairly quick results. Although much of an ongoing SEO plan will focus on continually building up your content and links, there will still be an initial optimization period to resolve common issues. Many of our own customers have seen enormous jumps in traffic and their rankings just from the first 30 to 90 days of work.

If your boss is concerned about not seeing any results from investing in SEO, try to put a focus on these “quick wins.” They may include things like writing unique title tags for your pages, adding new keywords to your content, or compressing your images so your site loads faster.

Moz has a huge list of 96 quick SEO tasks that can be completed in an hour or less. While some may be more effective than others, they all have the potential to give your site a boost in searches. Share a few of these with your boss and see what they think!

Focus on the ROI

No matter how long it takes to see results from your SEO, the potential ROI is enormous. You can get some tips on explaining the ROI of SEO in the previous section.

The ROI you see from investing in SEO is often incremental. For the first month or two, you may make a little extra revenue; after six months, you may see higher gains of 10-15%; after a year, you could be looking at much more than that. Depending on what you currently make online and what your conversion rate is, a steady increase in traffic can easily provide a steady increase in profit, too.

SEO is a Long-Term Marketing Strategy

Something that your boss does need to understand is that when you invest in SEO, you’re in it for the long haul. SEO isn’t something that you can do for a little while, just until you hit #1. An ongoing strategy is needed to both improve and maintain your online presence.

So while there may be some quick wins in store for you, the majority of what your SEO agency is going to do for you will take time to properly and thoroughly execute. Be clear about this when revisiting the topic with your boss – that way they’ll have the right expectations about the time needed to get your site to #1… and keep it there.

It may also help to present any kind of proposals from SEO companies you’ve contacted. Typically, these proposals will offer a long-term optimization plan or package that goes long beyond the initial work. By sharing these details, your boss will know exactly what the company you want to hire will be doing to help you – and just how long they plan to do each task.

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