Whether to put money into SEO is decided not by "do we want higher rankings?" but by this: are there buyers who search for a company like yours, can the extra enquiries recover the cost, and is there someone — inside or outside — to make the fixes? If any of the three is missing, something else comes before SEO.
On its official page "Do you need an SEO?", Google says that if you run a small local business, you can probably do much of the work yourself. In other words, it is worth finding out how far you can go on your own before outsourcing. This article sets out, from the buyer's side, the investment decision, the order of work, how to read a quote, and how to choose a provider.
Three questions before spending on SEO
| Question | How to check | If the answer is "no" |
|---|---|---|
| Do buyers search for a supplier like you? | Ask past customers how they found you. Search the terms yourself and see whether the top results are suppliers' sites or only dictionary-style articles and comparison sites | Put other channels first: referrals, trade shows, ads, industry bodies |
| Can more enquiries recover the cost? | Use the payback formula below to find how many enquiries you need | Cut the budget, or narrow the target to higher-margin work |
| Is there someone to make the fixes? | Write down who handles copy, CMS updates, the form and measurement | Make the engagement include implementation, or set up a team that can run it first |
If you have no capacity for new work, SEO can wait too. More enquiries you cannot handle only waste opportunities.
If you don't yet know why enquiries aren't arriving, first check where people stop with Why your website gets no enquiries: 7 causes. SEO is often not the answer.
Before you spend on SEO
Early SEO review: decide what to fix first from real data
Telling apart the words that lead to enquiries
The words a small business should prioritise in SEO are not the ones with the most searches but the words used by people just before they place an order.
| Type of word | Example | Reader's stage | Priority for a small firm |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ordering words | "aluminium machining prototype order," "labour consultant work rules price" | Looking for a supplier | High |
| Comparison words | "how to choose an X contractor," "compare quotes" | Narrowing down candidates | Medium–high |
| Problem words | "overtime totals done by hand," "stock counts don't match" | Has a problem, solution undecided | Medium (if it leads to your solution) |
| Definition words | "what is SEO," "what is RPA" | Looking something up | Low |
The examples in the table are illustrative and say nothing about real search volumes. Collect your own words in this order:
- Read about 20 past enquiries, quote requests and won jobs, and copy out the words the customer wrote, verbatim
- Ask your salespeople, "How do customers first describe what they want?"
- Search the candidate words yourself and look at the top results
- Check in Search Console which words your pages currently appear for
The third check matters. If the top results are all dictionary-style explanations, the people searching probably aren't looking for a supplier. Words whose top results are suppliers' sites are likely to carry purchase intent.
Search Console does not show queries that only a few people search. Niche B2B words are especially hard to see, so don't conclude "no demand because it isn't in the report" — keep the words from past jobs at the centre of the decision.
If you trade locally
For a shop or a locally based business, setting up your Google Business Profile may come first. Google explains that local rankings are based mainly on relevance, distance and prominence, and that it does not accept payment to rank a business higher (local ranking).
On the other hand, avoid mass-producing identical pages that swap only the town name. Google's spam policies give "having multiple domain names or pages targeted at specific regions or cities that funnel users to one page" as an example of doorway abuse. If you build pages for the areas you serve, each needs its own substance, such as work done there and the conditions you serve it under.
The order of investment: technical, content, conversion
The principle is as follows. CVR (conversion rate) here means the share of visitors who send an enquiry.
Key pages not in the index; redirects or display broken
→ ① Technical fixes (a precondition for everything else)
↓ no problem
No impressions for buyers' words; no page that addresses them
→ ② Content (pages that lead to enquiries)
↓ impressions and visits exist
Visits, but no enquiries
→ ③ CVR improvement (explanation, decision material, the form)
This is a principle, not a law. On a site that already has visitors, ③ pays off first. Polishing the form on a site with almost no visitors can't be verified, and adding articles to a site whose visitors never enquire is pouring water into a sieve.
| Situation | Where to start | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Key pages are not indexed | Technical | A page that isn't indexed can't appear in search |
| Impressions come only from searches for your company name | Content | No page explains what buyers are searching for |
| Visits, but few enquiries | CVR | Making use of people already arriving is faster |
| A site move or redesign is planned | Technical (early) | Google also says a redesign is exactly when to bring in an SEO, the earlier the better |
On the technical side, the buyer should check these points:
- Are the key pages indexed in Search Console?
- Is a development-era
noindex(an instruction not to index) or a crawl block inrobots.txtstill in place? - After a site move, do old URLs redirect to the new ones?
- Does the site display properly on a phone, and can people enquire from it?
- Are pages extremely slow to load?
Things not worth paying for
Google's official guide explains that these do not decide rankings:
- The
meta keywordstag (Google does not use it) - Putting keywords in the domain name or URL (described as having hardly any effect on ranking)
- Content length (length alone doesn't decide ranking)
A proposal that lists these as its main work needs a closer look. What Google sets out as the basics in Search Essentials is meeting the technical requirements, not violating the spam policies, and creating content that helps people. Even meeting all of these does not guarantee crawling, indexing or serving.
How cost is set, and working out payback
Market rates vary widely with the conditions, so this section sets out what drives the cost and how to work out payback.
Cost = (hours of work × hourly rate) + external expenses
Hours of work go up or down mainly with:
- The number of pages reviewed, and whether CMS access is available
- Whether copy is written in-house or written externally after interviews
- Who carries out the changes (advice only, or implementation too)
- Whether measurement is already set up
Work out payback backwards, in this order:
Jobs needed = annual cost ÷ gross profit per job
Enquiries needed = jobs needed ÷ win rate
Hypothetical example (all amounts are illustrative; they are neither market rates nor any particular service's price)
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| Annual cost | 120万円 (1.2 million yen) |
| Gross profit per job | 40万円 (400,000 yen) |
| Jobs needed | 3 a year |
| Win rate | 25% |
| Enquiries needed | 12 a year (1 a month) |
In this example, both you and the provider should ask: "Can we credibly expect one more serious enquiry a month?" If not, the decision is to lower the cost, narrow the target, or choose another channel. Build in the time SEO takes, too. Google says changes can take from a few hours to several months to take effect, and suggests waiting a few weeks before judging (SEO Starter Guide). To judge any change in enquiries, measurement has to be in place first. The steps are in How to see your website's traffic and enquiries with Search Console and GA4.
Reading a quote: a checklist
| Item | What to check | Wording that needs caution |
|---|---|---|
| Scope of work | Number of pages, number of articles and rounds of changes are stated | Just "SEO package" |
| Who implements | Advice only, or CMS changes too; what your side must do | "Improvement proposals" with no word on who makes the changes |
| Success measures | Reports in the numbers you care about, such as enquiries and clicks | Only a table of rankings |
| Ranking guarantee | Assumes no guarantee and states how results will be checked | "Guaranteed #1" |
| Link work | No bought links or mass reciprocal links | "X backlinks" |
| How articles are made | Who interviews, who checks facts, what the number of articles is based on | Mass AI generation, or only "X articles a month" |
| Change log | Every change made to the site is shared | "Non-disclosure — it's our know-how" |
Ongoing-contract terms such as who holds access, deliverables and termination are set out as a checklist in What you can get from a monthly SEO or website retainer. This article stops at the initial investment decision.
What can be promised, and what cannot
| Can be promised | Cannot be promised |
|---|---|
| Verified facts and the priorities based on them | Search rankings |
| Carrying out changes within the agreed scope | Numbers of enquiries or sales |
| Setting up measurement, and where each number comes from | How changes in Google's algorithms will affect you |
| Using only methods within the guidelines | The outcome against competitors' moves |
Google states: "No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google." (Do you need an SEO?). It also warns against providers who claim a "special relationship" with Google, and against SEO firms that email you out of the blue, and writes that "ultimately, you are responsible for the actions of any companies you hire."
Who to hire
| Provider | Suits | What to check |
|---|---|---|
| Do it yourself | Small local businesses; someone in-house can write | Time you can sustain, measurement skills |
| SEO specialist firm | Highly competitive fields, large volumes of articles | Any link schemes or mass production; who implements |
| Web agency | Doing SEO alongside site changes | Hands-on SEO experience; whether they select search terms |
| Freelancer or engineer for outside support | You want technical and measurement foundations, then run it in-house | The setup, cover when they are away, how documentation is left behind |
Before choosing, ask the questions Google itself lists:
- Can you show me examples of your previous work?
- Do you follow the Google Search Essentials?
- What kind of results do you expect, and in what timeframe? How do you measure success?
- What experience do you have in our industry and our area?
- Will you share with me all the changes you make to my site?
At the audit stage, grant only read access to Search Console. Google, too, advises not to grant write access at that stage. Check the official help page for the types of Search Console permission.
The practices Google lists as spam include buying or selling links for ranking purposes, excessive link exchanges, using automated programs to create links, and scaled content abuse (Spam policies). Check that none of these appears in a proposal. If they are found, the company that commissioned them is the one held responsible.
If going it alone is difficult, the support on offer and how the cost is set are described on the website growth and measurement page. Rankings are not guaranteed, and the scope is agreed in writing before any work starts.
Four things to settle in-house before you set a budget
- Copy out the words from 20 won jobs
- Search the candidate words yourself and note what kind of results come top
- Check the indexing status of your key pages in Search Console
- Put your own gross profit and win rate into the payback formula to find how many enquiries you need
With these done, you should be able to decide much of whether to spend on SEO at all.