Capitalisation of Search Engine Ranking Costs
Search Engine rankings and value
Search engines allow users to find products, services or information. This is also known as search based intent. Given search engines are around 24% of traffic to websites on average (Hitwise) this is valuable traffic to most websites.
Organic search engine rankings cannot be bought but rely on the quality of your website, website content and linking. To rank well for competitive terms can take some investment not only in internal resources but also external search engine optimisation consultants.
The potential return on this investment is high, as high search engine rankings for popular keywords will drive trafficwith the potnetial to convert. Search engine rankings thus have a value to the organisation. Not only do they provide ongoing traffic and potential customers, they also assist in the organisational branding and visibility, as good search engine rankings usually perceived as belonging to quality websites and organisations.
As with any asset, to maintain high search engine rankings requires maintenance. Like any asset, the rankings can be impacted by internal constraints, competitors and search engine algorithms. As with assets, they can become obsolete, damaged or destroyed by “Acts of God” or search engines.
So undeniably, there is effort, cost and knowledge development from which an asset results, which also results in ongoing benefits to the organisation. The asset, being search engine rankings and the ongoing benefit being traffic to the organisation website. So should the cost of achieving high search engine rankings be capitalised and considered as an asset in an entity’s balance sheet.
