Is SEO Important For Every Business?
If you’re asking questions like these, you’re in the right place. As experts in the field of SEO, or search engine optimization, we know that the right SEO can make or break a business online. On this page, we’ll explain why SEO is important, which businesses need it, and offer some resources so you can explore the topic further.
Let’s get started with an explanation of how SEO works, and how it impacts your website’s rankings in the first place.
How Does SEO Work?
SEO consists of multiple strategies, actions, and best practices, all of which have the end goal of improving your website’s position in search engines—which is why it’s called “search engine optimization.”
There are two kinds of SEO: on-page and off-page. On-page SEO consists of anything you can control on your own website to improve your rankings. This refers to things like site speed, keyword presence, header text, and so on. On the other hand, off-page SEO consists of anything done on other websites that may influence your rankings. Generally, this only refers to links.
It takes time, knowledge of SEO, and successful implementation of the desired on- and off-page SEO factors to optimize your website for high rankings in search engines. If the collective power of your site or an individual page’s SEO is more powerful than all others, with regards to a specific query, you’ll rank #1.
Because SEO involves so many ranking factors, you can think of the #1 site as winning a triathlon of sorts. In a real triathlon, the winner of the running portion is not necessarily the winner of the entire race – and so it is the same with SEO. The site with the most links, the most pages, or the most visitors is not necessarily the #1 site. Their overall performance determines who comes out on top.
Why is SEO Important?
SEO is Google’s way of determining which sites deserve to rank highly for each query entered into its search engine. Without modern SEO, it would be extremely simple to manipulate the search results so that the site with the most links or the most pages—all easily generated by software—consistently ranked #1.
SEO is important because it keeps the search results fair. It reduces the ability to manipulate these results as much as possible, so that the sites appearing for each search are there because they deserve to be there. Hard work and a website that appeals to visitors correlate with high search engine rankings, so if your site meets these criteria, you’ll have a better chance at showing up in the results.
Users trust search engines, and achieving a top spot in search engine rankings signals to searchers that your site is a credible source. The higher you rank in results pages, the more clicks and traffic your site will generate. SEO also improves user experience, making it more likely for customers to become repeat buyers.
And SEO is cost-effective. Competitive industries can spend large amounts of money on paid website traffic. Of course, you can still purchase ad space, but if you’re working with a tight budget, SEO is a great way to drive qualified traffic to your site without directly paying for it.
What Search Would Be Like Without SEO
Without SEO, it’s hard to say how we would ever find websites, businesses, or the information we seek on a daily basis. The search engine results would be too easy to manipulate, and as users, we would have to look much longer and harder to find valuable sites instead of the ones simply manipulating the results to get to the first page.
Basically, SEO is important because it ensures that typical people don’t have to search for more than a few seconds to find the information or products they want. It establishes a sort of “natural order” online that would be missing without it.
Marketers Believe SEO is Crucial
Additionally, many marketers find that SEO is crucial to their work. This chart shows that 50% of marketers believe SEO is the most effective digital marketing strategy.
As you can see, SEO is very important—and without it, you might even be spending too much money on other marketing activities!
Is SEO Important for Every Kind of Business?
If you’re reading this article, you may be wondering if SEO is really all that important for you. You may have a business in an industry where there’s little to no competition, so you might already be ranking #1. Or you may be struggling to rank at all, and are wondering if there are options other than SEO out there to get you the visibility you need.
No matter what your situation is, if you have a website for your company, SEO is important. Whether your business is new or old, struggling or successful, small or large, SEO is crucial to your online success. In fact, even if you are the only one in your industry, SEO is still important.
Here are a few examples of industries and businesses that can benefit from SEO:
- Manufacturing
- Healthcare
- Retail
- Home services
- HVAC
- And more
Why is that? It’s because of one very important reason: your SEO is something you can control.
There are many things about your business that you can’t control. You can’t control when a new competitor appears, how well your customers react to a new product launch, or your quarterly profits.
But with SEO, you can control your rankings. And this means, to some extent, you can control how many visitors come to your website, which directly impacts how many online sales or leads you get, which impacts the amount of money you can make from being online.
If you invest in your website’s search engine optimization, you are making a direct investment in its visibility and profitability. So no matter what happens tomorrow, if your SEO is constant, you can count on that visibility to help your business grow and prosper.
This is why SEO is so important, no matter what your business does. And based on the way search engines are developing, it’s unlikely that SEO will lose importance any time soon.
Is SEO More Important for Some Businesses Than Others?
You may be wondering if investing in your website’s SEO is really all that important. Do some businesses or industries need search engine optimization more than others?
Every website has different needs, when it comes to SEO. But it’s rarely the business or industry that determines those needs. It’s typically factors like
- The website’s stage in the growth process
- How visitors are reacting to the website
- What keywords the business wants to rank for
- The amount of competition for those keywords
- Whether or not any SEO has been done in the past
- Whether or not the site is under any kind of Google penalty
Where the industry can have an impact is with regards to competition. If you are creating an online jewelry store and are determined to rank for the keyword “jewelry,” your SEO is going to be more costly, and more time-consuming, than SEO for a jewelry store for children targeting “fine children’s jewelry.” This is because the competition on that first keyword is much, much higher—so it will take much more work to break into the top positions.
This doesn’t make SEO any more important for your jewelry site, though. It just means it’s more of a challenge. SEO is just as important for every business, no matter its industry or competition. Again, this is because you can’t control many of the factors that surround you, but you can control your SEO. And if you could directly influence your website’s traffic, ranking, and sales or leads… why wouldn’t you?
Can a Business Stop Doing SEO Once It’s Successful Online?
Let’s say, a few years from now, your business is highly successful online. Your website is easily earning links, your visitors are arriving in a steady stream, and you’re seeing a regular growth in sales. Can you stop worrying about search engine optimization once everything looks good?
No! In fact, no matter how successful you become, you should never stop optimizing your website. Even the largest, most profitable companies in the world still use some level of SEO. However, because of their success, they may have changed the specific amount of time and resources they decided to dedicate to each specific SEO tactic.
Here’s what we mean: if your website is brand new, and you’re looking to make it very authoritative, you may aggressively build links to it. In five years, however, you may find that you are earning lots of links naturally. This doesn’t necessarily mean that you should stop building links entirely, but that you can scale back the amount of time you spend on manual outreach.
But when it comes to SEO, nothing is certain. As of right now, Google places a lot of weight in the number of, quality of, and relevancy of links pointing to your website. A few weeks from now, however, it could declare that links are no longer as important, and that the amount of content you have plays a bigger role in determining your rankings.
Because SEO is always changing, it’s crucial not to become complacent, or to assume that your site, in its current state, will always rank where it does. Search engines consider the freshness of your content as well as how recently other sites have linked to you. If you don’t update your content, you may not gain new links, and your site will lose relevancy over time.
Your competitors will always be working to outrank you, and search engines will always be changing. Unless you keep up with the optimization of your site, you won’t have much luck maintaining the success you find online.
So, in short, no—you should not stop doing SEO once you are successful. If you do, you’ll likely find that your success is very short-lived.
The article credit goes to WebFX
12 Reasons Why Your Business Absolutely Needs SEO
12 Reasons Why Your Business Absolutely Needs SEO
SEO is important for greater searchability and visibility, but offers more real value than that. Here are 12 reasons why businesses need SEO to take their brand to the next level.
Many brands and businesses know (or think they know) that they need SEO for their digital properties, and the benefits they will get from that SEO work being implemented on their behalf.
SEO will certainly improve a website’s overall searchability and visibility, but what other real value does it offer? Why is SEO so important?
These 12 reasons should offer some clarity, regardless of the industry or business size, as to why businesses need SEO to take their brand to the next level.
1. Organic Search Is Most Often the Primary Source of Website Traffic
Organic search is a huge part of most business’s website performance, as well as a critical component of the buyer funnel and ultimately getting users to complete a conversion or engagement.
As marketers know, Google owns a significantly larger portion of the search market than competitors like Yahoo, Bing, Baidu, Yandex, DuckDuckGo, and the many, many others.
That’s not to say that all search engines don’t contribute to a brand’s visibility — they do — it’s just that Google owns about 75 percent of the overall search market. It’s the clear-cut leader and thus its guidelines are important to follow.
But the remaining 25 percent of the market owned by other engines is obviously valuable to brands, too.
Google, being the most visited website in the world (as well as specifically in the United States), also happens to be the most popular email provider in the world (with more than 1 billion users). Not to mention YouTube is the second biggest search engine.
We know that a clear majority of the world that has access to the internet is visiting Google at least once a day to get information.
Being highly visible as a trusted resource by Google and other search engines is always going to work in a brand’s favor. Quality SEO and a high-quality website takes brands there.
2. SEO Builds Trust & Credibility
The goal of any experienced SEO is to establish a strong foundation for a beautiful website with a clean, effective user experience that is easily discoverable in search with thanks to the trust and credibility of the brand and its digital properties.
Many elements go into establishing authority regarding search engines like Google. In addition to the factors mentioned above, authority is accrued over time as a result of elements like:
- Quality backlink profiles.
- Positive user behavior.
- Machine-learning signals.
- Optimized on-page elements and content.
But establishing that authority will do more for a brand than most, if not all, other digital optimizations. Problem is, it’s impossible to build trust and credibility overnight — just like real life. Authority is earned and built over time.
Establishing a brand as an authority takes patience, effort, and commitment, but also relies on offering a valuable, quality product or service that allows customers to trust a brand.
3. Good SEO Also Means a Better User Experience
Everyone wants better organic rankings and maximum visibility. Few realize that optimal user experience is a big part of getting there.
Google has learned how to interpret a favorable or unfavorable user experience, and a positive user experience has become a pivotal element to a website’s success.
Customers know what they want. If they can’t find it, there’s going to be a problem. And performance will suffer.
A clear example of building a strong user experience is how Google has become more and more of an answer engine offering the sought-after data directly on the SERPs (search engine results pages) for users.
The intention of that is offering users the information they are looking for in fewer clicks, quickly and easily.
Quality SEO incorporates a positive user experience, leveraging it to work in a brand’s favor.
4. Local SEO Means Increased Engagement, Traffic & Conversions
With the rise and growing domination of mobile traffic, local search has become a fundamental part of small- and medium-sized businesses’ success.
Local SEO aims at optimizing your digital properties for a specific vicinity, so people can find you quickly and easily, putting them one step closer to a transaction.
Local optimizations focus on specific towns, cities, regions, and even states, to establish a viable medium for a brand’s messaging on a local level.
SEO pros do this by optimizing the brand’s website and its content, including local citations and backlinks, as well as local listings relevant to the location and business sector a brand belongs to.
To promote engagement on the local level, SEO pros should optimize a brand’s Knowledge Graph panel, its Google My Business listing, and its social media profiles as a start.
There should also be a strong emphasis on user reviews on Google, as well as other reviews sites like Yelp, Home Advisor, and Angie’s List (among others), depending on the industry.
5. SEO Impacts the Buying Cycle
Customers do their research. That’s one of the biggest advantages of the internet from a buyer perspective.
Using SEO tactics to relay your messaging for good deals, groundbreaking products and/or services, and the importance and dependability of what you offer customers will be a game changer.
It will also undoubtedly impact the buying cycle in a positive way when done right.
Brands must be visible in the places people need them for a worthy connection to be made. Local SEO enhances that visibility and lets potential customers find the answers, and the businesses providing those answer.
6. SEO Best Practices Are Always Being Updated
It’s great to have SEO tactics implemented on a brand’s website and across its digital properties, but if it’s a short-term engagement (budget constraints, etc.) and the site isn’t re-evaluated consistently over time, it will reach a threshold where it can no longer improve because of other hinderances.
The way the search world evolves, basically at the discretion of Google, requires constant monitoring for changes to stay ahead of the competition and, hopefully, on Page 1.
Being proactive and monitoring for major algorithm changes is always going to benefit the brands doing so.
We know Google makes thousands of algorithm changes a year. Fall too far behind, and it will be extremely difficult to come back. SEO pros help to ensure that is avoided.
7. Understanding SEO Helps You Understand the Environment of the Web
With the always-changing environment that is the World Wide Web, it can be a challenge to stay on top of the changes as they take place.
But staying on top of SEO includes being in the loop for the major changes taking place for search.
Knowing the environment of the Web, including tactics being used by other local, comparable businesses and competitors, will always be beneficial for those brands.
8. SEO Is Relatively Cheap
Sure, it costs money. All the best things do, right?
But SEO is relatively cheap in the grand scheme of things, and the payoff will most likely be considerable in terms of a brand’s benefit and bottom line.
This isn’t a marketing cost; this is a true business investment. Good SEO implementation will hold water for years to come. And, like most things in life, will only be better with the more attention (and investment) it gets.
9. It’s A Long-Term Strategy
SEO can (and hopefully does) have a noticeable impact within the first year of action being taken, and many of those actions will have an impact that lasts more than several years.
As the market evolves, yes, it’s best to follow the trends and changes closely. But even a site that hasn’t had a boatload of intense SEO recommendations implemented will improve from basic SEO best practices being employed on an honest website with a decent user experience.
And the more SEO time, effort, and budget that is committed to it, the better and longer a website stands to being a worthy contender in its market.
10. It’s Quantifiable
While SEO doesn’t offer the easier-to-calculate ROI like that of paid search, you can measure almost anything with proper tracking and analytics.
The big problem is trying to connect the dots on the back end since there is no definitive way to understand the correlation between all actions taken.
Still, it is worth understanding how certain actions are supposed to affect performance and growth, and hopefully they do.
Any good SEO is going to be aiming at those improvements, so connecting the dots should not be a challenge.
Brands also want to know and understand where they were, where they are, and where they’re going in terms of digital performance, especially for SEO when they have a person/company that is being paid to execute on its behalf.
There’s no better way to show the success of SEO, either. We all know the data never lies.
11. SEO Brings New Opportunities to Light
High-quality SEO will always find a means of discovering and leveraging new opportunities for brands to, not just be discovered, but to shine.
Offering quality SEO to brands means submersing an SEO team in everything that is that brand. It’s the only way to truly market a brand with the passion and understanding that brand’s stakeholders have for it: becoming a stakeholder.
The better a brand is understood, the more opportunities will arise to help it thrive. The same can be said about SEO.
12. If You’re Not on Page 1, You’re Not Winning the Click
It’s no secret in the world of SEO that if you’re not on Page 1, you’re likely not killing the organic search game.
A recent study shows that the first three organic search ranking positions result in nearly 40 percent of all click-throughs, while up to 30 percent of all results on Page 1 and 2 don’t get clicked at all.
What’s this mean? Two things:
- If you’re not on Page 1, you need to be.
- There are still too many instances when a user types a search query and can’t find exactly what it’s looking for.
Conclusion
Implementing strong, quality SEO on a brand’s website and digital properties is always going to be beneficial to that brand and its marketing efforts.
It’s considered a “new age” marketing technique, but it’s critical to a brand’s web presence in this day and age, especially as available data and rivaling competition continue to increase and grow.
The article credit goes to Search Engine Journal
Why SEO is much needed during COVID?
SEO is needed more than ever. For many years, the importance of SEO has been neglected as the trend of Social Media Marketing took over the marketing budget for most of the companies. But they didn’t realize it earlier that merely having a website is not enough. I am gonna ask you some hard-hitting questions:
- Do your website is having enough traffic without spending on ads?
- Is your website visible on the first page when you search for the target keywords?
- Is your local business listed under Google My Business?
- Does your website communicate the exact message that you want it to?
- Are you tracking your competitor’s moves on search engines?
If the answer to the above questions is ‘No’, then you’re totally missing out on the super important Marketing Trend of 2020 and that is Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).
“SEO is making your website visible to the target customers and provide them with a piece of relevant information and message that your business is based on, to convert them as a customer or client through search engines like Google.”
51% of people visit the company’s website to make a purchase.
68% of users say they use Google to discover or find a new item or product.
Don’t you think you’re losing a huge chunk of business to your competitors by not optimizing your website as per Google standards? That’s where SEO comes into the picture.
If you’re not convinced enough, we’re gonna give some more reasons to start SEO or hire an SEO agency to workout for you as soon as possible. Lookout:
1) Everything starts with a simple ‘Google it’
From online cooking classes to medicines or groceries home delivery, People search in Google. Why? Because they trust Google and the first five results shown by Google are super-hit.
75% of people never scroll past the first page of search engines.
Businesses located locally are becoming so popular and in-demand due to restrictive delivery services by big players and people want everything from small stuff to big delivered at their door-step.
In the year 2020, Google has seen a hike on search terms containing ‘nearby’ like doctors nearby, salon nearby, cafes nearby etc. and the first few results are shown by Google takes a majority of the business.
Is your website among the first few results shown by Google?
2) People are used to getting services by staying at home
Who would have thought that even the fashion shows will be held virtually? People are participating in them with equal excitement as they used to do before Coronavirus.
There is an endless number of services that we didn’t even think would be possible online. But look around you. Everything is digitalized. Goods, services, people, places. You can have everything by sitting at home.
But is your business still lacking an online presence? Or maybe you have an online presence, but are you genuinely exploiting this superb opportunity to upgrade your business and use digital platforms at its best?
3) Great time for domestic business
Imports have taken a lapse since past few months due to International transport restrictions during Coronavirus. Also, a national movement of ‘local for vocal’ has been on a buzz. People are genuinely supporting domestic products and services.
This is a great time for domestic born businesses to capture this opportunity and make their awesome products reach to the right audience.
4) Less foot traffic on physical store
Even though the process of gradual unlock is in process but the Coronavirus has no expiry date. With the rising number of COVID cases, people still prefers to stay at home. The stores are literally burning their budget on electricity, staff salary, rents and many unseen costs.
Whereas, you have the opportunity to make your online store worth reaching for the people looking out for new products. Of course nothing comes for free. You have to bear some costs but I can bet that these costs will be much lesser than the cost of operating a shop plus your reach will be wider.
5) User experience is important more than ever
This is just like how a store would make sure customers are comfortable during their visit. You’ll have to ensure that site visitors stay on your page instead of just hitting “back” once they get there. This user behavior indicates to Google whether users’ consider your site worth a visit or not.
6) SEO is less expensive than others
As, we are constantly saying that with proper SEO structure in place, you’ll be creating an asset for your business which will drive you revenue and build you a trust of people.
The results are long-term. The returns that you’ll get with good SEO will be far much more than the cost that you have spent.
During this pandemic, where marketing cost has taken a seat back, spending on SEO will be much more worthy as it’ll create a backbone for your business in long run.
7) People are searching for new things that makes their life easy
There has been increase in internet users to 3 billion people. With this COVID outbreak, new demands, new necessities and new required services has opened the door for new budding businesses. People are buying products that helps in dealing with this blue situation.
When we say search, what comes into our mind? Obviously Google. It’s time for your business to be out there where the people are spending their most of the time.
What should you do now?
It’s your duty to provide hope to people and to yourself for after pandemic, it’s all going to be worth it.
For many businesses, the future is uncertain. The world is dipping into a recession and picking yourself up during and after will not be easy. Please make sure to invest in a long term marketing strategy that will provide a way out after the pandemic. SEO is considered to be a long term strategy.
What you do today will bear fruits later in the future. Since the pandemic has no expiry date, it makes sense to put more effort into a long term strategy so that once this virus has crawled back to wherever it came from you are ready to receive customers.
SEO done now is a seed for the future.
Final Word
It’s a real tragedy for the world as so many people and businesses are affected by this pandemic. Remaining indoors will keep you safe and when the pandemic finally comes to an end, we will be ready to rebuild our lives and economy.
And, NOW is the best time to make the best use of SEO to build your brand.
