SEO for Network Marketers – Pros and Cons

Search Engine Optimization is a great method for getting traffic to a website in order to capture more leads for a network marketing company. Many networkers gravitate towards SEO because, depending on how you do it, it is usually low cost or even free. Of course, there are other pros to SEO and there are some cons. In this post I’ll briefly explain some of the Pros and Cons so you can determine if search engine optimization is a good choice to help you achieve your business goals (ie get more traffic, convert that traffic into leads, and build your opportunity!)

PROs of Search Engine Optimization

• Technically SEO does not require any cost. There are some tools that make different aspects of SEO quicker and sometimes people buy links to help them rank (which by the way is a HUGE “no-no” in the eyes of Google and can get your site banned if you get caught). Even with great tools though, this method is often much cheaper than alternatives such as Pay Per Click Ads, Banner ads, buying leads, buying lead lists, etc.
• There is HUGE opportunity with SEO. It’s common knowledge that over 80% of people who use search engines click on one of the organic listings instead of one of the paid listings (or “sponsored ads”). This means that if you are able to rank on the first page of the search engines (especially in positions 1, 2, or 3) you can get much more traffic to your site than if you simply bought paid advertising for the same keywords.
• SEO is also somewhat technical – something that I think is a plus. Many internet marketing gurus have admitted that they are ignorant of how SEO works and tend to rely heavily on paid advertising. This means that if you are willing to persevere to learn the ins and outs of search engine optimization, you can have an advantage.
• It is long lasting. If you make the long journey to rank highly in Google or other search engines, it is quite likely that you will hold that spot for a long time. This means you will also get the traffic from that keyword for quite a long time (as long as you did it in a way that Google likes). This can mean lead generation that works without you having to continue to put in tons of work.

Cons of SEO

• Slow Results. While there are some cases in which you can get rankings very quickly, usually it takes weeks or months to get ranked for even a handful of key terms. This means that your business will likely not grow very fast if you are relying solely on SEO to bring in leads for your opportunity. This is in contrast to paid advertising which can give much more immediate results.
• You have to have more strategic landing pages. Because Google wants to provide a great user experience for its searchers, your landing pages will have to meet a much stricter set of requirements than landing pages that are receiving only banner ad traffic or traffic from sources that don’t care about what your page you are sending people to. (Traffic sources such as newsletter ads, banner ads, joint ventures with other marketers’ lists, emailing your own list, etc.) Designing landing pages for search engine traffic takes more thought and it is probably safe to say that they convert less traffic than other sources.
• You have to have a content rich site. For the most part, SEO requires two things – 1) Great Content and 2) Lots of links from other relevant, authoritative websites. Again, remember that Google and the boys want the site to add value to people, not just try to sell them on something. This means that search engines like sites that have valuable, unique content and lots of it! Creating this content can be time consuming and can cost some money if you outsource it.

Essentially, SEO can be a wonderful way to drive lots of traffic to a website on a long term basis if you are willing to put in the work, learn the ins and outs, and get ‘er done. In my opinion, it is an invaluable part of any online networking business and is definitely a tool I use in The Sponsoring System. If this was helpful to you, make sure that you subscribe to this blog so you don’t miss any of the information that will help you succeed in using the internet to recruit people into your business.