Since I've started building websites for people, I keep hearing a lot about SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and how important it is or isn't. 

For a lot of Marketers it becomes a lifelong dream to have their business found on page 1 of Google and generating tons of leads and customers for Free. (Meaning not paid traffic)

Wouldn't that be cool to be able to show your friends or even your competition that you are on the 1st page on Google?

Then you would be considered a success!.......Right?

Let's look at ROI

While ranking high in search results might take your business to new levels it could also hurt your ROI. (Return On Investment) 

Getting the first spot on a given Google Search isn’t an overnight event.

In fact it takes tedious hours, weeks, months, and even years of time and money to get. 

That’s especially true when you’re competing for highly desired keywords with websites that have been around for decades.

With growing competition and more and more blogs out there it's becoming harder and harder. 

According to Quora, there are 59.3 million new blog posts published every month on WordPress alone. That is an average of 22.8 posts per second!

Most people end up chasing this dream, financially driving their business into the ground in the process.

Getting top-ranking results on Google is great, but it’s often not worth the cost.

Here’s why ranking 1st page on Google is bad for your ROI and what you should be focusing on instead.

Nearly Impossible-to-reach ranking factors

To understand why ranking #1 on Google is bad for your ROI, you first need to understand what it takes to rank 1st page.

In 2016, Google released a Q&A video featuring a search quality senior strategist who shared with us a major revelation for SEO.

Links and content are the two most important ranking factors when it comes to getting a top position on Google.

Why? It’s because you need amazing content that users want to read and you need links that show how authoritative your website is.

Multiple studies in recent years have backed up this fact from Google.

For example, HubSpot’s blogging benchmark data found that the more you blog, the more traffic you get.

On top of that, the more you blog, the more leads you will get. 

Why? More blog posts give you more chances to rank higher on Google search results.

They give you more indexed pages and more ways to acquire new leads and clients.

But that’s not often doable for most businesses. Writing dozens of blog posts a month isn’t an option when you’ve got customers to take care of. 

On top of that, you need links from high-quality websites with high domain authority.

Those are industry-level sites like HubSpotKissmetrics, and hundreds more.

But that’s not all. According to Backlinko, the top-ranking sites have unbelievable amounts of total external backlinks.

They also found that having HTTPS instead of HTTP made a significant difference in ranking your website. Always install an SSL certificate so you have HTTPS.

Click here to get one for free when you get a new website.

To sum it up, you need all of this to rank 1st page on Google.

  • Thousands of total external backlinks.
  • All from high-quality websites with high domain authority,
  • And from hundreds of diverse sites.
  • HTTPS for best results

The odds are stacked against you, unfortunately.

But that's not all that goes into ranking your website. 

Speed Matters!

According to Backlinko, Site speed matters. pages on fast-loading sites rank significantly higher than pages on slow-loading sites.

That's why we recommend using WPX Hosting as your hosting provider for your website. They have the best site loading speeds and support we have ever seen. 

Speed is also very important for conversions which we will talk about here in a bit. 

Top-ranking content takes time and money to get

Compounding on that last section, this all takes up a diminishing factor that we can’t manufacture more of.

Time.

And guess what? Time equals money.

When it comes to labor, even if you run your own business, your time is your money.

You’re on the clock.

You don’t have the money to spend five years ranking for “network marketing.”

You can’t afford it when the difficulty is this high:

It has a difficulty of 70. That’s simply going to be hard to get.

Just look at how many Backlinks the top 3 articles have to their sites.

Also notice their Domain Authority:

Do you have a domain authority higher than 50? If not, you’ve already narrowed your chances down to almost zero.

Do you have thousands of links pointing to that post that you want to rank for this term? If not, you have a very small chance.

It’s the tough reality that most of us face.

More than likely, the site with the top-ranking content for a given search term published it years ago and is constantly updating it.

They’ve had years upon years to build up their backlinks and are still refreshing it with new data to keep it relevant.

It’s virtually impossible to catch up with them at this point.

It’s futile. It will cost you so much money and time that it will, in fact, destroy your bottom line.

The main question you have to ask yourself is, “Will this impact my ROI?”

Is getting 5,000 more visits a month going to make you more money than it costs to get on the 1st page of Google?

It most likely won’t. You might have to spend years of work to get that traffic, potentially costing you thousands of dollars in labor and research.

There are ONLY 28,600,000 search results for 'Network Marketing' on Google.

Google changes constantly

Every year, Google updates their algorithm 500-600 times. That’s more than once a day.

Some sources even say that they update it 2-3 times per day.

Google will only continue to change their algorithm and increase their update frequency to meet the needs of a changing market.

So, what on earth does this have to do with ranking on 1st page of Google?

It shows us that spending years to rank for a top keyword is futile.

What happens when you dump $100,000 into link building and promotion when Google decides to change how ranking factors work?

What if links become obsolete in the next five years?

That’s potentially business-ending money that you’ve spent on a tactic that could fade away.

With that in mind, what can you do other than striving to rank first? Here’s what you should focus on instead.

Focus on conversion!

Your focus shouldn’t be on rankings and traffic. Rather, it should be on leads, conversions, and sales.

Focus on your bottom line and nurture your current customers.

It’s much easier to drive sales with existing customers than to acquire new ones.

Try upselling current customers to create higher lifetime values rather than looking to achieve new rankings for more traffic.

On top of that, you can even try running Facebook Lead Ads that are often cheap.

This is one of my favorite strategies for getting new, highly-targeted leads.

Facebook has diverse custom audience options that allow you to target your ideal customers.

If your customer value is high, running Facebook Ads will be much more profitable to gain new leads than investing $50,000 in link-building efforts.

Now if you've never done Facebook Ads before... I'd highly recommend getting some training on it before you just throw some money into it and hope it works. 

Running Facebook Ads can be highly profitable as long as you spend the time and define your target market, test different ads, and tweak them for utmost performance. 

Conclusion

Ranking on Google is a dream for most marketers.

Everyone wants to rank on Google and get thousands more visitors to their website every month.

Ranking number one could take your business to new heights when it comes to getting traffic and leads.

But it’s not that simple.

With millions of blog posts published every single day and thousands of new websites popping up, it’s nearly impossible to rank for high-volume keywords.

Spending time and money on this strategy might only bankrupt you.

When thousands of sites are competing for the same position, it can quickly become a drain on your resources.

Current ranking factors for Google focus on content and links as the top two. But the problem is that most established sites have more links than you can acquire in a lifetime.

The odds are stacked against you.

To achieve the top spot, you’d need to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on link-building campaigns and content production.

Google is always updating their algorithm and the way that their search engine functions.

Putting an investment into links now could be worthless in five years if they make major algorithm changes.

Instead, focus on getting leads. Getting conversions. 

That's what we are all about at Troyer Websites

Focus on improving your click-through rate and trying to capture the most relevant traffic you can get.

What are you currently focusing on to improve the ROI for your business?

About the author 

Jonas Troyer

Jonas Troyer is the owner and founder of Troyer Websites a web design and digital marketing firm in Apple Creek Ohio.

{"email":"Email address invalid","url":"Website address invalid","required":"Required field missing"}

Subscribe to my newsletter now!