Not every marketer benefits from what it takes to mount and sustain a major SEO effort.

Just like in retail, not every business can justify the prime real estate location; nor should every store have its own sidewalk clown to hook passersby. If any program has the potential to become the proverbial bottomless money pit for B2B marketers, SEO is it. Every business wants it, so SEO companies have sprouted like mushrooms with some very slick programs to sell to eager buyers with high expectations. A marketer begins to wonder just what the SEO is really doing after months of receiving boilerplate SEO reports, to-do lists that never get done, and account reps that call less and less frequently. When will the magic kick in?

Or, on the other hand, SEO may become the proverbial ‘be careful what you ask for’ project: too successful. The SEO provider has a company coming up page one with the right keywords, but site visitors are not converting. Now, marketing and sales programs must be upgraded while would-be customers and sales leads vanish.

Because SEO demands so many unique skill sets, in-house SEO is no less fraught with management and execution challenges. SEO demands industry, product and sales knowledge coupled with writing, website development, and marketing management expertise.

So, how badly do we need yet another marketing tool?

A subset of the general category of search marketing, SEO demands a healthy investment in time and/or expense to achieve a reasonable return on investment. Place SEO in perspective before initiating a search optimizing program. Treat SEO as just one more arrow in the marketing lead-generating quiver that includes:

• Search Engine Optimizing
• Click advertising
• Direct marketing e-Promotions
• Integration with traditional advertising, PR, event and other sales and marketing promotions

Planned properly within the scope of an overall marketing program, the right dose of SEO at the right time will yield a respectable ROI. An independent marketing services company that combines SEO, business marketing experience, and relevant industry expertise has a vested interest in making sure all pieces of a marketing puzzle come together. Dedicated, highly specialized SEO companies exist solely to get more eyeballs on a client site. Never mind that your site may be ill-equipped to handle new-found visitors, capture relevant visitor information, track traffic patterns, or otherwise encourage visitors to raise their hands and identify themselves as sales prospects.

How much SEO should you be doing?

Like any lead generating program, budget as much SEO as you can realistically plan to convert, track and measure against a planned ROI. Ecommerce sites can clearly benefit from higher volumes of high quality traffic from both natural and pay per click campaigns. B2B sites without a direct ordering mechanism or other clarion call to action may have a harder time cost-justifying the resources required for an SEO program that consumes more than its fair share of a marketing lead generation budget.

The really big question comes back to your choices for implementing SEO. Realize that even legitimate third parties committed to providing the best SEO services will inevitably require more than your cash to make their services work for you. Improving a site’s natural ranking with the major search engines (at this time these include Google, Yahoo and MSN) requires just three major things of your web site:

• Tons of relevant, keyword-rich content
• Lots of relevant links to your site (popularity)
• Easy to follow site structure with relevant naming conventions

In other words, even when outsourcing be prepared to do more than write a check when it comes to both content and link-building especially if you are a manufacturer, technology products/service company, financial services provider, or other industrial company. B2B marketing departments will be tasked with developing much of the new site content, regardless of who does the final SEO. For SMB (small to medium business) marketers on a limited budget, the following proves to be cost-effective SEO choices:

• Moderate investment in a site upgrade that includes SEO best practices coding.
• Regular site content additions that improve a site’s worth to prospects and customers.
• Ongoing research and registration on important industry directory sites.
• Well-planned click advertising campaign.
• Integration of existing PR, article and lead generation programs into your website.
• Add site analytics that work across all search engines - study what’s working and what is not.
• Add staff capabilities as appropriate to handle one or more of the diverse components required for SEO.

Remember to fulfill the promise

Does your existing website separate curious visitors from sales prospects?

A business website is a both a destination and a revenue-generating tool. Its marketing function is to service existing customers and encourage new ones. Its job is to “fulfill the promise” that drove the visitor there. Just as a Unique Selling Proposition (USP) draws prospects, your site must work to increase the qualified visitor interaction. SEO is important, but the marketer who gets his marketing house in order by first reviewing site search optimization in the context of a total marketing solution will stack his or her odds for a favorable return on investment.