When Is the Right Time to Invest in SEO?

One of the most common concerns I hear from business owners is about timing. They want to know, “Is now actually the right time to invest in SEO?”

I think that’s a really valid question, especially when budgets are tight and business owners are already being told they need to spend money on ads, social media, email, PR, content, and a dozen other things. SEO can easily feel like one more marketing expense that may or may not pay off.

And the truth is, sometimes SEO isn’t the best place to put a significant amount of money yet. That doesn’t mean SEO doesn’t work. It means there are businesses that are in a much better position to benefit from it than others.

I see this particularly with brand-new businesses. A founder launches a product, builds a website and immediately starts thinking about how to get more traffic to it. SEO seems like an obvious next step, but at that point they may still be figuring out who their ideal customer is, which products or services people actually want, what their messaging should be, and what makes someone choose them over a competitor.

If those things are still changing, the SEO strategy is probably going to keep changing too. You can absolutely start building good SEO foundations from the beginning, but I usually wouldn't recommend that a brand-new business make a huge investment in SEO before it has figured out some of those bigger business and marketing questions.

I learned some of this from my own business

I’ve changed the positioning of my own business multiple times over the last few years. I’ve refined my services, changed who I most want to work with, and gotten much clearer about the problems I actually want to solve.

Every time I’ve done that, I’ve had to change parts of my website too. Pages changed. Messaging changed. Calls to action changed. Content that made perfect sense for the business two years ago doesn’t necessarily make sense for the business I have now.

Looking back, I’m actually glad I didn’t spend a huge amount of money trying to rank every version of my business along the way. I would have invested in pages and content that I eventually decided I didn’t even need.

That doesn’t mean a new business should completely ignore SEO. I still think it makes sense to build a website with search in mind from the beginning. So set up Google Search Console, think about your site structure, understand how people search for what you sell, make sure Google can crawl and index the site, and build strong product or service pages.

You can get those foundations in place without deciding that SEO needs to become one of your biggest marketing investments immediately.

So when does SEO start to make more sense?

The businesses where I tend to see the clearest opportunities are usually already working in other ways. They’re getting sales through referrals, social media, paid ads, email, retail, partnerships, repeat customers, or some combination of those things.

At that point, they know which products sell, have a pretty good understanding of their customers, and their messaging isn't changing every six months. Most importantly, there is already some evidence that people actually want what they're selling.

At that point, I can look at the website and ask, Why aren't more people finding this business through search?

Some of my fastest client wins have come from businesses that were already successful. They weren't struggling to sell their products. They were selling through other channels, but their website wasn't doing nearly as much as it could to help new customers discover them. Once we figured out what was getting in the way and where the opportunities were, there was something real to build on.

A few things I would look at before making a big SEO investment

Are people searching for what you sell?

And I don't mean just searching for your brand name. Are people searching for your products, services, the problems you solve, or questions related to them?

SEO works best when there's existing search demand you can tap into. If nobody is searching for anything remotely related to what you sell, that's important information to have before you spend thousands of dollars trying to rank for it.

What does the competition look like?

Actually look at the search results for the things you'd want to be found for. Are you competing with Amazon and huge national retailers? Are there smaller brands showing up too? Are the results mostly product pages, local businesses, articles, Reddit discussions, videos?

I'm not looking at this just to decide whether a keyword is “too competitive.” I'm looking for where there might be an opening.

Do you know what makes your business different?

What do you do differently that your customers actually care about?

If you sell skincare, you're probably not going to build a particularly useful strategy around “we sell skincare.” The same thing applies to dog food, jewelry, clothing, furniture, or just about anything else.

Maybe your skincare is specifically made for rosacea-prone skin. Maybe your dog food works particularly well for dogs with sensitive stomachs. Maybe there's something unusual about your ingredients, your sourcing, your process, your audience, or the way people use the product.

Those differences give me much more to work with. They can uncover specific searches, content opportunities, PR angles, collection or product-page opportunities, and places where much larger competitors aren't necessarily competing with you in exactly the same way

Are you already showing up?

Sometimes a business assumes SEO isn't working because organic traffic is low. Then I look at the data and find pages getting thousands of impressions, searches sitting just outside the top results, or products showing up for searches nobody intentionally optimized them for.

That's a very different starting point from zero. Google already understands something about the site. Now I can start looking at why those impressions aren't turning into more clicks and where the existing visibility can be improved.

Can you see a realistic path from search to a customer?

.A keyword can have 10,000 searches a month and still be fairly useless to your business. I'd rather understand who is making the search, what they're looking for, where they're going to land on your website, and what you want them to do next.

Can that person reasonably become a customer? What is that customer worth? Do they buy once or come back repeatedly? Could they join your email list or subscribe? Is the search connected closely enough to what you actually sell?

Those questions are much more useful to me than search volume by itself.

So When Is the Right Time to Invest in SEO?

There isn't a universal milestone where I can say, “You've been in business for two years, so now you're ready for SEO.” I’ve worked with business who have been in business for 8 months, and other who have been in business for over 35.

What I'm looking for is a business that has enough clarity and traction that there is something meaningful for SEO to build on.

• You know what you're selling and who you're selling it to.

• There's evidence that people want it.

• There's search demand related to it.

• Your messaging and offers aren't constantly changing.

• And there's a reasonable path between someone finding you through search and that person eventually becoming a customer.

If you're not there yet, that doesn't mean you should ignore SEO. It may just mean your priority right now is getting the foundations right while you continue figuring out the business.

And if you are there, you may already have a lot more organic opportunity sitting in your website than you realize.

Not Sure Where You Fall?

I have two directions to send you. One is my Questionnaire that helps you find the data to see if organic search is helping to grow your business right now.

And the other is my SEO Growth Plan. This is where I’ll determine the best path for your organic search growth, and consult you exactly what you’ll need to do. This is a great option for people who aren’t quite sure yet what SEO work looks like for them, or if they should start investing in it.

Either way, you come away knowing where I'd put your time and money first, rather than investing in SEO just because somebody told you that you should.