- SEO isn’t for everyone: it depends on your sector, your margin and your sales cycle.
- A simple formula lets you estimate whether it will pay off before you spend a single euro.
- Sometimes you’re better off investing elsewhere: ads, conversion or referrals.
The promise and the reality
“Invest in SEO and you’ll be on the first page of Google, with customers coming in every day without paying per click.” That’s the promise plenty of agencies sell. And for some businesses, it’s true.
But not for everyone. SEO is a very powerful tool in some contexts and a waste of money in others. The key is knowing which of the two your business falls into.
In this article we’re going to run the numbers to see whether SEO is worth it in your case. No dogma, no “SEO always matters” clichés, just business math.
When SEO is gold
SEO works especially well in these scenarios:
1. Searches with strong commercial intent
People are searching for exactly what you sell, and they intend to buy. For example: “24-hour locksmith Vigo”, “divorce lawyer Pontevedra” or “tire shop near me”.
If you show up at the top for these searches, you get visits from people who have already decided to spend money. High conversion and a fast return.
2. Enough search volume in your area
If your service gets 10 searches a month in your city, it doesn’t matter whether you rank first: that’s 10 people. If there are 500 or 5,000, ranking well has a real impact.
3. Margins that can carry it
If you sell €20 products on a 10% margin, you make €2 per sale: you’d need thousands of sales a year just to cover what SEO costs. If you sell €2,000 services on a 50% margin, a handful of new clients already pays for the investment.
4. Capacity to handle the demand
If SEO works and you start getting 50 inquiries a month, can you handle them? If not, you’ll have paid to attract customers you can’t serve. Frustration all round, and probably a bad review or two thrown in.
When SEO is money down the drain
There are also cases where it just doesn’t pay:
1. Sectors packed with giants
Trying to rank for “buy cell phone” against Amazon, El Corte Inglés or MediaMarkt is burning money. You have neither the differentiation nor the budget to compete there.
2. Businesses that run on relationships
If all your clients come through referrals, trade fair contacts or direct relationships, SEO adds little. Nobody googles “B2B strategy consultancy” to hire someone they trust: they find you through their network.
3. Products or services nobody searches for yet
Innovations so new that people don’t even know they exist. Nobody searches for “solution X” if they don’t know X exists. Here SEO arrives too late: first you need advertising or content that educates the market.
4. Websites that convert poorly
If your website converts at 0.1%, doubling traffic with SEO doubles next to nothing. You’re better off improving conversion first, which can often be done without redoing the design.
The SEO ROI formula
Let’s get to the numbers. To find out whether SEO pays off for you, follow these 5 steps:
Step 1: estimate the potential traffic
Use Google Keyword Planner or Ubersuggest to check the monthly search volume for your service plus your location. Let’s say “dentist + your city” gets around 1,300 searches a month.
Step 2: estimate a realistic position
As a rough guide, based on various CTR studies, the first organic result gets between 25% and 30% of clicks, the second around 15% and the third close to 10%. Positions 4 to 10 get between 3% and 5% each. Beyond the first page, almost nothing. And if the results page shows ads or the Google map, those percentages drop.
If your website is new to SEO, be realistic: reaching positions 4 to 6 within 6 to 12 months is already a good result. That means around 5% of those 1,300 searches, roughly 65 visits a month.
Step 3: work out the leads
Conversion from organic traffic to an inquiry usually sits between 2% and 5%. With 65 visits, that’s between 1 and 3 leads a month.
Step 4: work out the clients
If you close 20% of your leads, 2 leads a month gives you 0.4 clients a month. In other words: one new client every 2 or 3 months from organic SEO alone.
Step 5: put a value on it
0.4 clients a month is about 5 clients a year. If each client brings in €2,000 in revenue, that’s about €9,600 a year attributable to SEO. If SEO costs you €6,000 a year, it looks profitable.
But careful: that’s revenue, not profit. On a 50% margin, that €9,600 becomes €4,800, below the €6,000 you’re paying. In this example, you lose money in year one. What tips the balance is that SEO compounds: if you hold your rankings, in years 2 and 3 the traffic keeps coming without the cost going up. That’s why you need to look at it over 2 or 3 years, not 6 months.
Worked examples
These 3 examples are illustrative and use round numbers: yours will be different.
Example A: dental clinic in a mid-sized city
- Searches for “dentist + city”: 2,000 a month
- Expected position after 6 months of SEO: between 3 and 5
- Estimated clicks: 150 a month
- Leads (3%): 4.5 a month
- New patients (25% of leads): 1.1 a month
- Value per patient: €1,500 a year (check-ups and treatments)
- Revenue attributable to SEO: €19,800 a year
- SEO cost: €8,000 a year
Verdict: profitable. Revenue is 2.5 times the cost and, even after deducting what the treatments cost, the numbers work.
Example B: online electronics shop
- Searches for specific products: 5,000 a month
- Competition: Amazon, MediaMarkt and big chains
- Realistic position: between 8 and 12 (bottom of the first page or on the second)
- Clicks: 100 a month
- Purchase conversion (1.5%): 1.5 sales a month
- Average order: €80, on a 15% margin
- Revenue attributable to SEO: about €1,440 a year (about €216 in margin)
- SEO cost: €6,000 a year
Verdict: not profitable. You lose money every month.
Example C: highly specialized B2B consultancy
- Specific searches: 200 a month (a technical niche, such as a particular certification or regulation)
- Position: 1 or 2 (little specialized competition)
- Clicks: 70 a month
- Leads (8%, very high intent): 5.6 a month
- Clients (15%, long sales cycle): 0.8 a month
- Value per project: €15,000
- Revenue attributable to SEO: €144,000 a year
- SEO cost: €12,000 a year
Verdict: very profitable, as long as you have capacity for 9 or 10 more projects a year. Revenue is 12 times the cost, although the long cycle delays the first income. And note the difference from relationship-driven businesses: here nobody searches for “strategy consultancy”, they search for the answer to a specific technical problem.
Alternatives when SEO isn’t the priority
If the numbers don’t add up for SEO, consider these options:
Google Ads (SEM): you pay per click, not for position. Each visit costs more, but the effect is immediate. It’s ideal for checking that your pages convert before investing months in SEO.
Local SEO: instead of competing nationally, own your area. Google Business Profile, reviews, content written for your city. Less competition and a faster return.
Improve conversion: before doubling your traffic, try to double your conversion rate. Sometimes fixing a contact form or rewriting a page has more impact than months of SEO.
Other channels: social networks where your audience actually is, email marketing to your existing customers, partnerships with complementary businesses or an incentivized referral program.
Checklist: is SEO worth it for you?
- Are there enough monthly searches for my service or product?
- Can the competition be beaten with reasonable effort?
- Does my margin per client justify waiting months for a return?
- Does my website turn at least 2% of visits into inquiries?
- Do I have the capacity to handle more demand if SEO works?
- Am I prepared to wait 6 to 12 months for meaningful results?
- Do I have the budget to keep SEO going consistently over that time?
If you answer yes to 5 or more, SEO is probably worth the investment. If it’s 4, look at the points that fail before deciding: many of them can be fixed. If it’s 3 or fewer, start with the alternatives.
The pragmatic conclusion
SEO is neither magic nor a scam. It’s a marketing tool with costs, benefits and clear conditions. Like any investment, it has to be judged on the numbers.
For some businesses it’s the best digital investment they can make. For others, it’s money burned. The difference lies in your specific case: search volume, competition, margin, conversion capacity and the patience to wait for results.
If you’d like us to run the numbers for your business, at Baqueiro we’ll do it with you: we analyze your target searches, your competition and your current capacity, and give you a realistic estimate of the return. And if the numbers don’t work, we’ll tell you so instead of trying to sell you SEO. Tell us about your case.