SEO for a Professional Services Firm
I had suggested to a current client that they may want to consider some SEO work for the company website. The owner did not see the benefit at this time and said, “Almost all of our business is referral.”
I have an awkward time arguing that point. There is a bit of the chicken and the egg aspect to converting web traffic to clients for a professional services firm.
In the case of this particular response from a client, there are a few aspects of his business that may very well be served by improved SEO and increased traffic. The site now generally serves as a marketing brochure. Looking at the existing traffic, it’s apparent that the users coming to the site know the company exists and are most likely using it as a way to find a phone number, email or mailing address.
The key point here is that the traffic coming in is not likely the sort of traffic that has a ‘problem’ that could be solved by becoming a client of this firm. That’s the sort of focused traffic that I’ll be looking to generate for them. Yes, almost all of their business is referral, but I want to change that.
Lets look at a basic start to calculating ROI for them:
- 500 visitors/month increase due to SEO;
- 2% call to action (phone,email,contact,rfi);
- results in 10 ‘leads’;
- 10% close rate on those leads, conversion to client;
- results in 1 additional client per month
I actually think that the 2% call to action in this case is low. Somebody looking for a firm that does X will not go through 50 sites prior to contacting one, but I’ll go with that to be conservative.
The owner has to buy into the benefits of SEO. Being able to put a solid ROI calculation in front of them is a good first step.
