How dead is SEO?

[Michel]

Alright so I did my last link building around 3 years ago. That would be about 6-7 months after the second penguin update. The landscape of link building had changed so much that I was looking for other ways to make more money with less effort.

After crushing the terms auto insurance quote and car insurance quotes and getting 4$ - 5$ so did it no really feel tempting at all what stuff I could rank and the way I liked todo it.

I since then switched gears completely and been doing alot more paid traffic, and having my own offer. Been doing alot more $$$ then I ever have done before. As the company is growing and I'm responsible less and less for traffic generating and we are slowly starting to build our own brand, so am I wondering a bit about SEO.

We are a descent company and I got 2 people on paid traffic section and I'm starting to wonder if I should bother with SEO at all.

How dead is it today, is the reward there in terms of real money? Is it worth hiring one person at a western salary $2000 - $3000 to deal with it? Or should we just be happy for what we get naturally from customers since we do get that as well.

 

[Tove]

If you hire western person for $2000-3000 per month, which I think is basically min wage in USA, you shouldn't expect quality. If someone knows seo, they won't work 9-5 for min wage.

You should find someone to check competitiveness of keywords in your niche, and decide if it's actually worth putting time and budget in, or just continue with paid traffic.

Best option IMO would be
- Hire someone 1-time to do keyword research, full on-page, technical seo and fix everything on your site
- Hire someone to do outreach for you monthly, for $2-3k monthly you can get really decent links

Guy who would you hire for $2-3k most likely doesn't have knowledge needed to do proper outreach, and he would probably build stuff like 2.0s, blog comments etc. which don't have value anymore

 

[Stephen]

Got to agree with the above, you are not going to anyone who knows what they are doing for $2-3K a month full time.

 

[knownerror]

The SEO landscape has matured. Everyone and your grandma won't be able to hop into the industry compared to 2008 where that might've been the case. It would be best to find someone who has a proven track record (would probably cost you more than minimum wage in the US) to do the job correctly. The last thing you want is for their work to bite you in the ass due to their low quality of work.

Cheers.

 

[Michel]

If you hire western person for $2000-3000 per month, which I think is basically min wage in USA, you shouldn't expect quality. If someone knows seo, they won't work 9-5 for min wage.

You should find someone to check competitiveness of keywords in your niche, and decide if it's actually worth putting time and budget in, or just continue with paid traffic.

Best option IMO would be
- Hire someone 1-time to do keyword research, full on-page, technical seo and fix everything on your site
- Hire someone to do outreach for you monthly, for $2-3k monthly you can get really decent links

Guy who would you hire for $2-3k most likely doesn't have knowledge needed to do proper outreach, and he would probably build stuff like 2.0s, blog comments etc. which don't have value anymore

Got to agree with the above, you are not going to anyone who knows what they are doing for $2-3K a month full time.

The SEO landscape has matured. Everyone and your grandma won't be able to hop into the industry compared to 2008 where that might've been the case. It would be best to find someone who has a proven track record (would probably cost you more than minimum wage in the US) to do the job correctly. The last thing you want is for their work to bite you in the ass due to their low quality of work.

Cheers.

You all make perfect sense, In the end so did I not even accept client work unless it would pay me $5000 min per month.

There is a lot more ways where it's easier to get quality traffic for less effort, just thought about it for a while.

 

[jstover77]

You can hire a company at $2K-3K per month, but it won't be full time. There are plenty of good SEO agencies who will do high quality work with that price range.

PM me some of your keywords. I can give you some advice and let you know if it's even worth the investment.

 

[miketpowell]

I have an offer that I built with paid traffic and that's the bread and butter. However if I could go back in time I'd do plenty more SEO stuff from the start. The ROI is huge compared to paid traffic and not even comparable at all, at least in this case. The issue is simply the delay, any investment in SEO seems to take 6-12 months before it pays off vs paid traffic you can gauge your ROI instantly.

We have 2 competitors that both probably get 1mil+ in sales a month just from SEO - we should be there in a year or two but would have been great if I hadn't waited so long to get started on it.

 

[Phenom]

I hope it is not dead or I am unemployed tomorrow lol.

 

[Broland]

You can hire a company at $2K-3K per month, but it won't be full time. There are plenty of good SEO agencies who will do high quality work with that price range.

PM me some of your keywords. I can give you some advice and let you know if it's even worth the investment.

Yea basically this. You don't need somebody working full-time to start getting some good traction in organic rankings - especially if it's an established site that is already getting paid traffic. (OP never mentioned full-time either, just posters after him did.) I would take @jstover77 up on his offer here - I personally charge for this kind of free consulting these days

Also I disagree with the comments about outreach and web2.0/blog comments. Outreach can work but can also be a huge wast of time compared to hooking up with the right people that already have good contacts in place. And Web2.0 and blog comments when done right can make some really nice impacts on your rankings - I've ranked sites in many SERPs (including big boy high competition markets) without any "outreach links", or any PBN silliness that seems to be all the rage these days, but I do effectively use both Web 2.0 and blog comments.

 

[finnegan]

...And Web2.0 and blog comments when done right can make some really nice impacts on your rankings - I've ranked sites in many SERPs (including big boy high competition markets) without any "outreach links", or any PBN silliness that seems to be all the rage these days, but I do effectively use both Web 2.0 and blog comments.

What are blog comments done right? I wasn't aware that there was a wrong way to do them.

 

[Cash Builder]

What are blog comments done right? I wasn't aware that there was a wrong way to do them.

100s of spammy, do follow blog comments on random blogs with 100+ other links is the wrong way to do blog comments these days.

Well crafted and relevant comments on relevant, real blogs with real traffic is the correct way to do blog comments. You get the link (usually no follow) but you get traffic and outreach opportunities.

I have been doing about 5 - 10 comments for my new site per day for a few weeks and got a good amount of traffic, plus a few big influencers in my niche are noticing me.

 

[Broland]

What are blog comments done right? I wasn't aware that there was a wrong way to do them.

Yea, see the comment above. Niche relevant blog comments on decent sites that aren't totally spammed can be great for tier links. High quality sites that get traffic and have well written blog comments that entice readers to click a link straight to a main site can also provide some nice traffic and ranking benefits. So that's the "right way" to do them.

The "wrong way"... not even sure if srs... but order up 10k of the cheapest blog comments you can find and send 'em to your website homepage with 1 target KW as anchor text - that's a good start for the wrong way.