The Depreciation Of SEO
episode
Voices of Search // A Search Engine Optimization (SEO) & Content Marketing Podcast
22 min
3 speakers
8 chapters
transcribed 1 month ago
Transcript
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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
What is the overall concept of “SEO depreciation” and why does it matter?
The Voices of Search Podcast is a proud member of the I Hear Everything Podcast Network. Looking to launch or scale your podcast? I Hear Everything delivers podcast production, growth, and monetization solutions that transform your words into profit. Ready to give your brand a voice? Then visit IHear Everything.com. Welcome to the Voices of Search Podcast, a member of the I Hear Everything Podcast Network. Ready to expedite your company's organic growth efforts? Sit back, relax, and get ready for your daily dose of search engine optimization wisdom. Here's today's host of the Voices of Search Podcast, Tyson Stockton. Hey, what's going on? My name is Tyson from previsible.io, and joining me today is Will Crichslow, who is the CEO at SearchPilot.
SearchPilot specializes in SEO A-B testing and optimizations for websites, helping businesses improve their online presence and user experience. Their innovative solutions ensure that clients see significant improvements in their website performance and search engine rankings. Will and I talked about making organic search into a performance channel and some of the best practices around managing SEO within an organization. And today we're gonna continue the conversation by discussing the depreciation of SEO. So with that, here's my conversation with Will Critchlow, CEO at SearchPilot. Will welcome back. Hey, good to be back. So I mean, as I was I guess in the outtakes of this, like butchering the title of the episode, um, maybe kind of just set the stage for the listeners like
What's the what's the connection here? Like why why are you looking at SEO as like a depreciating value?
Yeah. So the um the word depreciation comes f is a financial concept, comes from the idea of an asset that is uh that gradually loses its value over time, certainly if you don't maintain it. And that is the angle that I'm kind of coming at here is so yesterday we were talking about communicating with business stakeholders and thinking in the or thinking and talking in the language of a general manager or someone who's managing multiple channels and thinking about the flow of money through the organization. And I'm extending that concept a little bit here to an idea that I think is very valuable very important when it comes to forecasting, when it comes to budgeting and when it comes to measuring return on investment.
Which is this idea that it at its heart, the simplest question is, what do you think would happen to your organic search if you just did nothing to the website for years? And there are certainly some instances where you're like, it'd be fine, we're on a rocket ship, you know, uh I I published a one-page website and the demand is just going up so fast that you know we're just gonna do better and better and better. My argument is For most organizations that is not the case. So in a kind of mature website, mature space, what you would expect to happen if you did nothing is organic search would decline year over year. The organic search to your website.
How does Will define depreciation for a mature website’s organic traffic?
So That was where I started from, was asking that question. What do you think would happen? And the reason was I saw I see so many organizations measuring the return on investment of their SEO activities by looking at Year of year change. So how much organic search traffic did we get last year? How much organic search traffic did we get this year? And looking at that, hopefully uplift and comparing it to the spend on SEO. That only makes sense if you think this asset is completely flat in value if you do nothing. So if you'd done nothing, would it have been flat? If yes, then it makes sense to say, well, we're up 10% year over year and we spent, you know, X hundred thousand dollars. How do these num uh numbers uh compare.
If you think that it would have gone down if we'd done nothing, you need to compare the return on investment, the return. Sorry, you need to compare the the what it cost you to not only the increase, but the amount it took you to get back to zero in the first place. And there are certainly some industries, some declining brands, some spaces where staying flat year over year would be a huge win.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the overall concept of “SEO depreciation” and why does it matter?
0:00–3:07
2
How does Will define depreciation for a mature website’s organic traffic?
3:07–5:13
3
Why would a website lose 10‑20% of organic traffic each year without maintenance?
5:13–8:32
4
How can you use the depreciation idea to build a realistic SEO forecast?
8:32–11:23
5
Why should SEO be treated as an investment asset instead of an expense?
11:23–14:29
6
Can SEO spend be capitalized on the balance sheet and what would that look like?
14:29–17:09
7
What practical steps help leaders model SEO ROI and scenario‑plan for decline?
17:09–19:40
8
How do you get business leaders to buy into SEO’s value and protect budget?
19:40–22:18