SEO will never die. Or will it? If you have a website, you know that SEO is a necessary part of building your online business. You know this because you’ve been told that you must generate targeted traffic to your website from search engines.
But now suddenly you’re seeing things that are saying SEO is dead. These claims may be confusing. Let’s take a closer look and find out why SEO will never die!
What is SEO?
Before we go any further let’s make sure we understand exactly what SEO stands for. SEO stands for search engine optimization. This is the process of driving quality organic traffic to your website. The way this is done is through keywords that your potential customer uses to search for your product or service in the search engines to find your website.
There are hundreds and potentially thousands of other businesses competing for the same customers, which is why it’s essential that you optimize your website to beat out your competition and be at the top of the search results.
And the best way to do this is not by stuffing your website with keywords, but rather by focusing on certain aspects of your website with quality content, site speed, mobile-friendliness, and interactivity. And of course the importance of adhering to the best practices of search engines such as Google. This allows you to provide what the search engine requires for higher placement and simultaneously provide your customers with what they need as well.
Why SEO will never die
SEO will never die, simple as that!
As long as there are search engines there will be a need for SEO. And the search engines aren’t going anywhere. However, SEO is an ever-changing industry that constantly evolves and if you aren’t keeping up with it then it might as well be dead. Search engine algorithms change, and when this happens you’ll need to make the necessary changes to your website in order for you to maintain or improve your position in the search engines.
The success of your website in the search engines depends upon your adaptation to these changes. The good news when it comes to this is that many of your competitors will not stay up to date with these algorithms and they will NOT make these changes giving you the advantage.
By continually improving your SEO to reflect the changes, and to beat your competition you’re gaining the many benefits of driving high-quality targeted traffic to your website organically. And this is why SEO is not going anywhere.
Here are some more reasons why SEO isn’t going anywhere and never will:
SEO gets directly in front of your target audience.
Not only does it put you in front of them, but it also does so at exactly the right moment. Your potential customers are searching for your products or services, and when they search if you’ve optimized your website and keywords your website shows up no matter what time of the day they search.
SEO Delivers A High Return On Investment
SEO will never die because it gets the job done. This online marketing strategy is by far one of the highest ROIs. And the results are often long-lasting. You don’t directly pay to be listed in the search engines, so essentially you’re driving targeted traffic to your website free and consistently.
SEO Gives You A Competitive Advantage
SEO can’t be easily taken away, so once you beat out your competition it’s going to be harder for them to get the advantage.
How has SEO evolved over time?
Over the years there have been many changes in Google’s algorithm. And because of these changes search engine optimization has been constantly evolving. Let’s take a closer look at just how SEO has changed over time.
Keyword Stuffing Now Hurts Your Ranking
Keyword stuffing was a technique many webmasters used to get ranked high. They overused the keywords that were popular – placing keywords in hidden places throughout the website such as invisible text, within the website’s code and many others. When Google finally caught on to this black-hat technique they changed their algorithm to identify it and dropped any website in front of the search results that were using this technique.
Today Google expects that you provide natural keyword placement in your content, and they prioritize websites that provide quality content for that keyword.
Content Quality Over Quantity
At one point, the content that you used didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was having content filled with the target keywords. This resulted in tons of poorly written and duplicate content. But the more content you had the better you ranked in the search engines. This made ranking high easy, just keep pumping out content.
Thankfully those days are long gone. Today SEO focuses on the quality of content rather than quantity. You’ll need to write content that is informative and provides value rather than fills the page. Google wants to show results that are in your best interest and this means quality content on reputable sites.
Mobile-Friendliness
With a focus that has gone from desktop to mobile, there’s no wondering why mobile friendliness is important. Websites that are not mobile-friendly will display poorly on a phone. Google rewards websites that are mobile-friendly, so optimizing your websites is essential to showing up in the search results performed on a phone. And it’s no secret how many searches are performed on a phone.
Focus on Local SEO
This is by far one of the biggest changes when it comes to SEO. Competing with companies that aren’t in your local area didn’t make much sense. But over the last couple of years, the shift has been made to local search so that you can find local companies nearby. This improved your target audience reach and made ranking easier as a local small business.
Google My Business came onto the scene and allows local companies to create a profile and start ranking in local searches. Along with opportunities to rank for location-specific keywords so that you can reach your target market without overspending.
No More Link Schemes
Getting links pointing to your website is an essential aspect of your SEO efforts. However, the quality of the links pointing to your websites wasn’t always so important. At one point in time, there was something called link-building schemes. These schemes allowed you to get a ton of fake links to get your site ranked higher in the search engines.
This black-hat method will now get your website penalized and potentially banned from the search results forever. Google wants natural links. Natural links are links that are achieved through guest posts and relevant authoritative websites. This takes time and effort.
SEO Will Never Die: The Benefits of SEO
Brings in more customers through organic search
Organic searches account for over 50% of all web traffic. But what makes organic searches even better is that it also accounts for targeted quality traffic that provides quality leads. These searches often bring customers that are qualified leads. And what makes organic searches even better because it gives you a competitive edge.
There’s no denying that by ranking on the first page of Google you’re going to get seen by many customers and tons of clicks to your website.
Creates a trustworthy web experience for customers
When you’re listed in the search results as the top results it creates authority because part of getting ranked on the front page, and number one spot is built on creating a good experience for your potential visitor. Some of the requirements for ranking high in the search engines are how quickly your page loads, how many websites are linking to yours and how good your content is. These elements of SEO create a trustworthy web presence and are a crucial aspect of your business’s success.
So not only will these things help you to rank higher, but they also provide your user with fast-loading pages so that they can read your high-quality content that ultimately leads to a lead, or a customer for life.
Improves brand awareness
Converting users into customers isn’t always an easy task. This is why brand awareness is so essential to your business. It’s what encourages your visitor to buy from you, aids in repeat purchases, and increases your overall sales.
By ranking higher in the search engines you’ll dramatically improve your brand awareness. Thankfully, you don’t necessarily need to be in the first position of the search results to increase your overall brand awareness.
The fact that you’re listed in the top results, whether they click on the result and go to your website isn’t necessary. The potential customer sees your company name and begins to associate your brand with those solutions. The more times people see your company where they are looking the better it is for your company. The goal is to be at the top of their mind when they think of the type of products or services you sell.
It’s trackable
The ability to track the results allows you not only to determine your return on investment but it allows you to also figure out which strategies are working and which ones are not. This helps you to better optimize for what does work, and stop putting effort in the areas that are not. You can easily tie SEO into any paid digital strategy.
You have the ability to track your conversions from your organic traffic to know how much of your traffic is leading to sales. This can be achieved with Google Analytics. You can set up different trackable conversions such as on-site ad clicks, page views, order completions, click-to-call, and more.
To better optimize your website you’ll want to take advantage of Google Search Console. This will give you a good idea of how people are finding you, and how your ranking, so that you can make changes to improve your results.
A Better ROI
This is by far one of the greatest benefits of organic SEO, a better return on investment. SEO is a long-term investment that has a lower cost than any other digital marketing method. Generally optimizing your website for organic traffic will be a one-time investment, unlike paid advertising where you have to constantly pay for ads to generate leads and drive traffic to your website.
SEO provides consistent results without paying anything. Your initial investment creates lasting results that actually improve over time. You’ll find that your website begins to get picked up for keywords that you never optimized for, start getting backlinks naturally and suddenly you have a ton of organic traffic that doesn’t do anything to earn other than provide the search engines with what they want.
Helps You Stay Competitive
Thankfully for you, most of your competitors will not stay up to date with the changes in algorithms, constant improvements, and optimization for new keywords. And because of this you’ll begin to push your competitor further down the page and put yourself above them for every single search performed within your market.
By outranking your competitor you’ll improve your brand awareness, increase your authority, and generate more customers.
SEO Will Never Die
SEO isn’t something that should be taken lightly. There are many variables that come into play to properly optimize your website for the right keywords. The first and very important step is proper keyword research. Followed by creating quality content, building backlinks, and effectively optimizing your website to provide the best user experience.
This is no small task, and the reason so many companies turn to SEO professionals.
At InflowLabs we’ve been helping companies just like yours improve your rankings. We achieve this by leveraging content marketing, making necessary web improvements, and beating out what your competition is doing every step of the way. Our team of experienced digital marketers knows how to attract more customers and do SEO the right way, to prove to you that SEO will never die.