How to Convince Your Boss to Do SEO: Objection 5: "SEO won't give us the results we want."

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?

If this sounds familiar, there are a few ways you can convince your boss that SEO will put you on a path to the results you want. But the first thing you should do is clarify what these results actually are.

What Are Your Goals?

Your company more than likely has sales goals, if not more specific goals for the outcomes of its specific marketing programs. In fact, you may already have goals for your existing online marketing, if you are doing any.

The best way to convince your boss of SEO’s value is to find a way that it can contribute to these goals. Try to find any goals related to your website, online revenue or leads, or the success of your Internet marketing programs. They may look like this:

•  Increase online revenue by 50% YoY
•  Acquire 200 leads by the end of the year
•  Rank on the first page of Google in 6 months

If you don’t have any goals this specific, you may just want to focus on broader ones, like “increase company revenue by 10%.” (If your company doesn’t have any goals at all, you can still prove the value of SEO by getting results – feel free to skip ahead to the “try SEO” section.)

Are you currently meeting these goals, or are you falling short? How much time, effort, and revenue are you currently investing to get where you are in this process?

Put Together a Value Proposition

Now that you know what it is you’re trying to achieve, you can speak to how SEO can help you achieve those goals – and the value it can really bring to the table. The best way to do this is by putting together a mini value proposition document for your boss.

Sit down and create a document that shows the following:

•  Your current goals
•  How much you are spending on current marketing methods to achieve them
•  How much you would spend on SEO to achieve them
•  The cost difference (ex. if you would cut out direct mail at $15,000 per year to invest in a $10,000 per year SEO plan instead, you would list a difference of $5,000)
•  The current progress on your goals
•  The anticipated progress on your goals with SEO

On that last note – try to be realistic, but don’t undercut what SEO is capable of, either. If you feel confident that SEO can get your company to the front page of Google in six months, and boost your leads by 50% with it, don’t be afraid to estimate that.

Present this value proposition to your boss and explain how you feel SEO will help your company achieve your goals. If it will save you money, be certain to mention that. If you know from research that bumping up your position on Google will bring you a huge increase in traffic, break out the stats and studies.

At this point, your boss may still be wary of investing in SEO. That’s when you can break out your secret weapon: a trial run.

Try SEO for Yourself

If your boss doesn’t think SEO can deliver the kind of results they want, it’ll be up to you to prove it. If you can move the needle even a little bit, they’ll almost certainly be willing to invest in future activities (that is, as long as they realize that you probably can’t do your website’s SEO all on your own).

So how can you put your money where your mouth is? There are a couple of SEO “quick wins” you can try out:

•  Do keyword research for your website and implement a couple long-tail keywords into your copywriting
•  Optimize your title tags for the keywords you’re already targeting to improve your rankings
•  Build a couple links
•  Write a few pages of long-form content

Keep track of what you do, when you do it, and the impact these activities make on your website and leads. When you start seeing returns on your investment, report that to your boss. Be certain to stress that these are all the result of minimal SEO – and that with the help of a dedicated SEO professional or agency, you can do a lot more.