Where do I put my money. SEO or Improving website functionality

SEO or Improving website functionality

[sledge81]

Hello there,

I'm kind of caught in the middle with the above question. My affiliate sites generate a decent revenue a month of which I put back 50% of those earnings into improving my website.

I wanted to know what would be the best option if you were given two choices.

Either to pay someone to do seo for you (or)
Focus on the website functionality

My sites enjoy a good traffic and an amazingly low bounce rate. There is scope to improve on the SEO but at the same time i'd like to offer some really good tools to my visitors.

So. where do I put the money.

[londrum]

it depends on which one has got a better chance of bringing in the money.

if you've already got a good conversion rate for people when they visit the site then you'll probably make more money spending it on SEO.

but if your conversion rate is pretty lousy, maybe you'd be better off spending it on functionality, and convert the traffc you've already got.

i dont think people here can give you a definite answer... you need to have a good look at your stats

[sledge81]

Hhmmm.. true, it depends on the stats. The conversions are good and so is the traffic. The primary reason for improving the site functionality is because there are atleast 5 competitors in my niche.. and all of us pretty much offer the same content, hence the idea of improving the functionality.

Let me re-phrase.. If you and another competitor is fighting for the same traffic, would you focus on seo or functionality such offering some valuable tools (ex site comparison scripts and the likes)

And my opinion being that.. for SEO it might involve paying the outsourcing guys a monthly retainer to keep going at it, where as for functionality it seems like a one time fee.

[aspdaddy]

You could survey your users/members on functionality to see if theres any quick wins

[Status_203]

Unless you're simply too busy to do it yourself, I'd have my doubts about outsourcing the SEO. The research involved in quality link hunting can spark ideas for additional content/functionality. Which in turn can lead to new areas in which to link hunt, and so on.

[piatkow]

You could survey your users/members on functionality to see if theres any quick wins

What people vote for doesn't always convert into custom. I have seen a small business go into freefall because of a major change made on the basis of a survey.

[maximillianos]

Improving website functionality from a usability perspective is good seo. So you get both!

[OMZen]

@OP - we are in exactly the same boat with one of our sites.

Excellent traffic, very low bounce, ZERO seo so far.

We are investing in what's working currently - offering more tools, more features, more UGC incentives. :)