It might sound counterintuitive to say this as an SEO Consultant, but there are many websites that SEO simply isn’t the right fit for. I get a steady stream of enquiries, and for roughly 75% of them, I just can’t offer meaningful support.
There are a number of reasons why that’s the case and for each client I’d love to be able to explain in depth those reasons, but it’s just not feasible to do so, so I thought this article would be a better way to disseminate that information.
Local Businesses
Now just to clarify here – it’s not that local businesses could never benefit from SEO, they could. But do they need an expensive retainer of SEO services? Usually not.
Sometimes a local business has enough scope to justify a short project, they might have lots of services for example and an SEO professional could help them better organise their site and optimise their pages to communicate those services.
However, most of the time those businesses could simply get by with just a checklist of actions for them to undertake. There are loads of online guides to help:
- LocalSEOChecklist.org (a whole website dedicated just to helping companies optimise for local SEO)
- SEMRush Local SEO Checklist
- Backlinko Local SEO Checklist (including a spreadsheet template)
As well as Google’s own SEO starter guide.
A local electrician, hairdresser, pizza place, mechanic, locksmith or any trade that’s limited to a specific area, doesn’t need extensive SEO services. In fact, they rarely need SEO support at all – they just need to tick off the key elements (get listed in Google Maps, create service pages, create descriptive titles for pages etc.) and then move on to other initiatives.
Too Niche
A really common one is offering something that is so niche that no-one is looking for it or anything related to it, and there is no opportunity to broaden the scope.
SEO only works if people are already looking for the product, service or information you are offering. It simply capitalises on that existing demand, it can’t generate demand that isn’t already there.
Lots of people reach out because they’ve come up with an offering but can’t get eyeballs on it. Most of the time they have jargonny names like “Behavioural Texture Modelling” or “Attention Decay Cartography” that are things that the general public simply doesn’t know exists, so isn’t searching Google for it already.
That’s not to say that people won’t search for it in the future.
The example I always give is if Coca-Cola came up with Cherry Cola and decided to tell no-one, then just waited until they searched Google for it. That’s never going to work because how would users know to search for it if they don’t know it exists?
They first need to generate awareness in order to generate demand.
Often that comes in the form of other marketing methods. With big budgets that includes TV ads, billboards, PR etc. but with smaller budgets there are other ways to get your ideas out there.
And SEO can play a role, but it requires lots of big picture thinking and appetite for a long-term content marketing campaign. SEO services can be hugely impactful for the production of informational content on informational topics that users are searching for that are related to the offering. They can be used to drive traffic and subsequently make users aware of that new product/service/offering.
Doing this well can take time and there are no guarantees. For many business owners, it’s simply not a viable option but for some it can be fruitful if various factors all align.
A Great Job Has Already Been Done
I had a doctor reach out to me recently. In just 9 months he’d taught himself SEO to such a high level that he’d built and optimised his own website and was already generating strong organic traffic. In reality, he just simply did not need any external SEO support.
In this case, a bit of consultation helped to give him the confidence in his own abilities, and answer any lingering doubts he had. This saved him spending thousands of pounds a month in expensive retainer fees for someone to do a job that he was capable of doing himself.
I’ve also seen it where other consultants or agencies have done an outstanding job, the client just hasn’t had the patience yet to wait to see the results.
Or, in a lot of cases, the niche has a limited amount of opportunity for generating traffic and it’s already achieved its potential. Sometimes there’s simply no more traffic to be had without developing new products, services or offerings.
Too Competitive
Sometimes it’s not so much an issue with the product or service or the demand for it. Sometimes it’s simply about who you’d need to beat in order to rank anywhere near page 1 of search results (and therefore also be mentioned in AI).
Unless they themselves are also fairly large or have big budgets to be able to grow exponentially, it’s going to be very tricky.
Think about a product like hair dryers:
Why would search engines rank a small, relatively unknown company for a highly competitive term above the likes of Amazon, Boots, Dyson and Currys, when those brands have been around for decades and have demonstrated their reliability, authority and quality?
Sometimes there is an angle or feature that we can really lean into, and sometimes there are teams who have the ambition, resource and budgets to behave like a challenger brand – which can be great from an SEO perspective. But more often than not, the expectations are unrealistic.
Better Returns Elsewhere
Sometimes SEO could absolutely have an impact, but is it going to be enough of an impact to justify the expenditure?
For me to take on a project, I need to be sure that the client could have a clear positive ROI from the work. It would be dishonest to take on a client if I didn’t believe they could make their money back, and then some, from the impact of the work.
And often, they could have better returns elsewhere. Other marketing channels like social media, email marketing, and Google Ads can all be highly effective initiatives to explore. Sometimes a product or service simply lends itself better to those channels anyway.
Final Thoughts
I get it. As a business owner it’s difficult to be told that your product/service/offering has no demand, or your expectations are unrealistic, or that your plans just don’t quite make sense. Typically I’m not able to go into that level of detail with an enquiry anyway, and I wish I had the time to give bespoke advice to every one that lands in my inbox.
Sometimes I offer hourly consultation via video call if it feels like it would be a productive use of time (feel free to reach out if you think that would benefit you). But I have to be careful not to overstep my mark, I’m not going to go all Dragons Den about whether a business is viable or not, but I have pretty well honed instincts when it comes to marketing.
Many small businesses would benefit from getting stuck in themselves, making it much more cost effective than seeking answers from people who have an incentive to tell you that you need their services (I would never do that, but many would). It also allows you to be agile, putting budget behind different marketing methods and seeing what works rather than being tied into a long term contract for just one channel.
