I’ve kept the stance for several years now that beyond basic SEO, SEO is not a great use of time or money. If you artificially build links, you’ll eventually get penalized by Google. If you build a link-building business, your business probably won’t last very long either. If you build a link building network, it’ll eventually go away as we’ve seen with many Private Blog Networks getting hit in September, 2014. If you’re a link broker, be prepared to get a day job again.
Yet, despite the very obvious repercussions of trying to game the system with SEO beyond the basics of a good title, meta description, and keyword content inclusion, requests for direct advertising links and advertorial sponsored posts keep on coming in. Activity in the SEO forums, SEO social media, and SEO blogs are as active as ever.
I do understand publishing the occasional sponsored post because it’s such easy money, especially if the content is OK and relevant. But spending time and money on producing content is way more valuable than spending time and money trying to game SEO.
I’ve asked this question before and I’ll ask it again: If an SEO is such an expert, why doesn’t he or she build their own amazing SEO site and generate lots of passive income than work for an SEO company or be a SEO freelancer?
THE ANSWER TO THE MOST OBVIOUS SEO QUESTION
The answer is because the SEO expert simply can’t do it. Who wouldn’t want to make more money doing less instead of working to make someone else money. Everybody. As a result, the SEO expert becomes a freelance SEO or works for an SEO company because it pays more. How much more is the real question.
In a fantastic survey by a search firm called BrightLocal, they polled 1,700 SEOs to see what type of REVENUE they were pulling in a year.
As you can see from the chart, 37% of SEOs said they brought in less than $30,000 in revenue a year. 50% of SEOs surveyed said they brought in less than $50,000 a year. And 60% of SEOs said they brought in less than $75,000 a year in revenue. Notice how the % of SEOs making less than $30,000 a year has increased each year since 2011. And if I’m not mistaken, this is revenue for the ENTIRE company, not per person, although most SEO companies are made up of individuals.
I’m not sure exactly what the operating profits are given SEO is largely a service business. But let’s say that even if SEO business operating profit margin is a whopping 90%, those figures are still not very impressive.
If you are an SEO expert who can’t create an SEO-amazing site that brings in revenue for yourself, and can’t even generate $30,000 in revenue as a freelancer or client, then I would stop right there and find a new occupation.
Google, Bing, Duckduckgo, Yelp, and Ask.com’s mission is to make SEO less necessary because their algorithms will be able to successfully find the most useful content. If their algorithms don’t, they will lose business. It’s pretty simple.
SEO may be an effective short-term fix. But medium-to-long term, there’s a lot of risk if you do more than the basics. Focus on your brand, your content, and your community building efforts instead.
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Updated for 2017 and beyond.
Interesting analysis. The more and more I follow the really successful bloggers, the more I realize that what got them there was their talent of being really good at content marketing and promoting their sites; not advanced SEO. The more I get into this, the more I’m finding myself sticking to the basics when it comes to link building and instead focusing my time/energy into making more share-worthy content.
Fascinating how little SEO experts make! It doesn’t seem to make sense for anybody to do any SEO beyond the basics when there are so many stories of SEOs hurting websites.
Save money on this kinda stuff by just not doing it.
Wow – I haven’t seen a breakdown of SEO professionals earnings before. Interesting.
Building artificial links is not SEO at all. They are missing the whole point about it that is why they fail. SEO has gotten the reputation that creating links for the sake of it gets you anywhere but that’s wrong.
SEO is a short-term game. The long-term game seems to be good content, but who knows where the market is going! I’d be happy with fewer email spammers offering to make me first page in Google.
Ok as an SEO with a number of friends doing ridiculous sums of money from client seo, it seems to me that the majority don’t build their own platforms as they are….typically lazy
Well no that’s incorrect, the majority of other seo’s I meet are typically loners, and would prefer to make x amount for a client making minimum, rather than do the additional work to make it a business
If you take a look at ryan deiss, gael breton or the nohatdigital team, they all (Even with pat flynn) are working on the authority site model which is what you are referring to.
A lot of the small seo companies would rather not put in the additional work, to create content, products, email sequences etc-a lot of them got into it due to being able to work from home, and when they get good at it, its not a huge investment of time if they are using greyhat methods etc
I think you will see more and more actually move over to it now, as it is far more profitable, and easier to outrank most industries for a higher profit margin.
The only issue is if that industry is a lot of work etc, would you need staff, products, shipping etc etc?
Then it becomes which dollar is easier to make
You will find that a fair few seos also got into client work from running their own sites, simply for additional revenue, or have their own properties but don’t share them public
It sounds like a copout, and im really not trying to cause an argument, but its mainly due to other marketers sabotaging their efforts
Look at spencer hawes at nichepursuits-his site case study was attacked for months on end by people stealing his traffic and revenue, because it was easier for them to do that and copy his work, then put the effort in and find other niches etc
Authority site building will be huuuge in 2015
Laziness….. the plight of everything! But, it is a joy to be lazy too. One just can’t be lazy and then complain why they don’t have more money.