Some things in life make absolute sense, however others are flat out bewildering. In particular, I could never understand why companies spend thousands if not millions of dollars on marketing while giving their websites the cold shoulder. Opportunities are knocking, but nobody is home.

To squeeze the most out of the Internet, decrease marketing expenses and prepare for the future, companies must recognize their successes and failures. And since the world is becoming more e-centric by the day and search engines are registering more queries than ever before, hiring an SEO consultant to identify and rectify shortcomings is critical.

Here are 3 scenarios I see on a regular basis:
1) A large, established company spends a decent amount of money upgrading their website in an attempt to increase online exposure. They put out television commercials and print ads to drive people to their snazzy site, but totally ignore those at their fingertips. Allocating a portion of their marketing budget to SEO will decrease the amount of money needed to attract the same number of people, and will typically produce much higher conversion rates. Why? Instead of pushing people to take action, SEO allows companies to respond to actions that have already been taken (search queries).

2) Companies invest a lot of money in Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaigns, so they believe optimizing their website for search engines isn’t important. This means they’re losing out on a ton of traffic and paying for a vast majority of visitors derived from search engines. Simply modifying the meta information on each page can have a profound effect on rankings, so why not hire an SEO consultant to get things in order?

3) A business adopts social media with open arms and begins blogging like crazy. They hire an in-house blogger to generate content and build relationships on social channels. Over one year they amass 100 articles and spend $50,000 on the blogger’s salary, but unfortunately none of the blog posts are SEO-friendly and are therefore receiving limited exposure. An experienced SEO consultant may cost $2,500 for a day, but could save tens of thousands of dollars (or more) over time.

The moral of the story is that yes, what experienced SEO consultants charge may seem ridiculous, but in the long run it’s well worth the investment. Businesses aren’t paying for just the time an SEO consultant spends on their project, they’re paying for many years of research and experience that will help them succeed.