When is SEO Worth $100 Million?
To date, I’m not sure I’ve found a more detailed whitepaper on measuring the value of search engine optimization until reading this Whitepaper, How to Value SEO. There are some other sites that have developed similar whitepapers, but this is the first time I’ve seen it explained for someone with an MBA to fully understand.
The document walks any reader, with the use of a spreadsheet and free tools available from Google, to analyze and calculate the value of getting ranked. Included in the whitepaper are:
- Valuing SEO as a Comp Analysis
- Annual Value of a First Page Google Ranking
- Annual Value of a First Page Ranking Across All Search Engines
- Annual Value of Long-Tail Derivative Rankings
- Valuing Long Term Organic Rankings
- Calculating Present Value of First Page Rankings
Did you ever wonder what the annual value of a First page Google Ranking is for a highly competitive term like Health Insurance? How’s $7,471,194 sound? That’s exactly what it would cost, though, to bid and win enough ads to gain the same number of visits per year (840k at $8.90 per click). The Five-Year Net Present Value moves that number to nearly $100,000,000. (You’ll have to read the whitepaper to understand why that’s an accurate assessment).
Your SEO may not be worth as much, but it is time that you stop thinking about search engine optimization as another marketing expense and begin to start valuing it as an investment that can turn your company around – especially in this economy.
The estimated investment for a company to gain first page ranking for Health Insurance is $200,000 the first year and $50,000 each year after to maintain the ranking. That’s a very nice return on investment and a fraction of the cost of what it would take to obtain that same traffic in traditional media.
Download the Whitepaper from Slingshot SEO.