When companies consider investing in SEO, they usually think in terms of lead and/or online revenue generation. While this is obviously important, have you considered how SEO can increase the value of your company?
Like a popular brand name or product patent, strong organic search engine visibility is a valuable company asset.
Suppose you have short- or long-term plans to sell your business. Suppose you are a private equity firm and want to maximize the strategic value of your portfolio companies. A great way — and an overlooked way — to add value is to outperform competitors in organic search.
Dominating the field, or even being a strong player, means a buyer will hit the ground running in terms of organic traffic, organic lead generation and organic online revenue generation.
What Is SEO Worth?
Consider two businesses in the same highly competitive market, with all other things being equal except this: Company A ranks consistently at the top for the most important keywords (i.e., keywords with high volume and high conversion potential), and Company B is nowhere to be seen on Google searches for those keywords.
To match “A’s” position, “B” would have to invest tens of thousands of dollars for five years or more — and even then, after upward of $250,000 invested, may yet remain significantly behind “A” in the organic search arena. So five years down the line, Company B not only has been forced to play an expensive catch-up game of SEO, it has lost, consistently over those five years, the lion’s shares of organic sales leads and/or online revenue to Company A.
A strategic buyer would weigh these considerations very carefully before making an offer.
Giving Buyers the Right SEO Data
To maximize the value of their SEO assets, sellers of businesses must not only execute SEO well, they must also report the numbers properly and persuasively to prospective buyers. This includes:
- Being able to report accurate organic search traffic numbers and year-over-year performance.
- Being able to report keyword strategies based on volume and conversion potential (ranking highly for keywords nobody uses may impress novices, but not sophisticated business analysts).
- Being able to produce comparative SEO reports demonstrating your company’s SEO performance versus that of competitors.
Interested in investigating SEO as an asset-building strategy? Please contact us to discuss your objectives. We work with businesses in this situation on a regular basis and can give you a perspective based on real-world outcomes.