With SEO tactics, slow and steady wins the race.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the tortoise of digital marketing.  When we talk to clients about our SEO services, called Natural Listing Ads (NLA), we set expectations in terms of months, and sometimes even years.

It can be difficult to invest in a tactic and know you may have to wait the better part of a year to see it start to pay off.  It’s not a tactic for a business desperate for immediate leads (paid advertising works better in that case), and it can test anyone’s patience.

But you know how the story goes.  The hare didn’t win that race…

Case Study:  Boat Trailers Sales in Canada

A retailer of boat trailers in Canada came to Marketing 360® with the goal of ranking for some competitive keyword phrases:

• Boat trailer
• Boat trailers
• Boat trailer for sale
• Boat trailers for sale
• Boat trailers Canada
• Boat trailers Ontario

They wanted to gain organic ranking but didn’t have a big budget, starting with only 150 NLA credits per month.  That was enough for one keyword optimized blog post each month and optimization work on their main boat trailers page.

So the NLA team began plugging away, month after month, starting in April of 2015.

And for most of the first year, results were limited.  Their rankings were off page one and they weren’t getting any conversions from organic channels.

But in July of 2016, they started hitting on page one rankings for their target keywords, and their overall traffic was creating more branded search.

From there a steady climb began.  But it wasn’t just the high rankings that were exciting – it was the conversions that were coming with it.

As you can see, the clicks and conversions associated with NLA are clearly linked.  Once they started getting ranking, the conversions came with it.

Now, NLA is this boat company’s highest converting channel (data for last 6 months):

Strong click-through and conversion rates, but the real prize for their patient approach to SEO is the cost per conversion.  With the free clicks of organic traffic, their cost per conversion is over 90% cheaper than paid search ($3.78 vs $41.47).  NLA is saving them nearly $40 per conversion.

That’s ROI.  And much of the investment was time, which is always a factor with SEO.

As you analyze your marketing tactics, don’t let the long time frames sometimes involved discourage you.  SEO is a marathon, not a sprint.

Slow and steady will win this race, with long-term ROI once your efforts start paying off.

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*Results are based on past client performance. Individual account performance may vary. Results are not guaranteed.