What Kind of Businesses Would NOT Benefit from SEO?
The business world has evolved quite a lot since the start of human history. From selling goods in exchange for grain to giving away products for money that doesn’t even exist in the physical world, business has come a long way. And it is not just the trade side of things that has changed. The evolution of the business scene has revolutionized the way businesses market themselves as well.
Since customers now exist and move around in the online world more than they do in the real world, businesses now tend to invest more heavily in digital marketing techniques that help them build a strong presence there.
Search engine optimization or SEO is one such digital marketing technique. It brings a lot to a business in terms of growth. Driving traffic, generating leads, improving user experience, you name it, SEO does it. And because of this, SEO has now become an integral part of every online marketing strategy (or should be).
SEO has earned the popularity it enjoys in the marketing world with the way it has helped and continues to help businesses thrive. It is SEO’s extensive benefits that have made it for businesses what oxygen is for humans: absolutely critical for survival.
But as critical as it may be, is SEO’s worth set in stone, and all businesses, regardless of who and what they are, benefit from it? No…
Not All Businesses Benefit from SEO
Yes, many businesses can confirm that they couldn’t have achieved what they achieved without SEO. But regardless of how much anyone raves about it, there continue to remain businesses that have little to gain from SEO. These include:
Businesses that have a Monopoly
Do you know what SEO does? It helps you find exposure in an otherwise crowded online world. In other words, SEO helps your business get a leg up over your competitors and thrive. Think of it this way: your online business is like a shop in a crowded mall and SEO is a salesperson you have hired who identifies your target audience and brings them to your business so they don’t go to a competitor’s.
Now, if your shop is the only one that exists inside the mall, will you still need a salesperson to capture customers for you? No! The entire crowd will be yours to sell to. The same is true for businesses that are so big, they don’t have competition.
Think of businesses like Apple, Amazon, and others like them. Do you think they have competitors big enough to shake the monopoly they have in their industry? Of course not. If you Google “Apple and Amazon” right now, you may not get the fruit or the rainforest in the search results. You would get the tech company and the e-commerce giant. That’s how huge their popularity is.
Apple and Amazon have built a presence strong and credible enough that they don’t need to identify their target audience and then use the search terms they may be using to funnel them into their business. Customers come to them, by searching for them directly.
And if you are as big as Apple or Amazon, you don’t need to worry about SEO either. But most of us? We are smaller than these giants, and so, we do need SEO like regular businesses. Why? We will get to that in a bit but before that, some more businesses don’t need SEO. Let’s talk about them.
Illegal Businesses that Don’t Want Exposure
Imagine for a minute that you run an illegal business. Naturally, you would want to stay as hidden as you possibly can.
Now think, what is one of the biggest benefits of SEO? It brings traffic to your business.
So, do you think someone who runs an illegal business would want SEO? Of course not. That would be like hosting a party selling illegal goods and services and sending invites to the police to come over and crash it.
SEO is notorious for bringing exposure and traffic to websites that manage to do it right. And businesses that want to remain in the shadows, buried in some corner of the online world, and hidden from the eyes of all people have nothing to gain from it. In fact, they may have a lot more than just money to lose if they do end up investing in it.
But it’s not just illegal businesses that can’t benefit from SEO. There are some perfectly legal businesses as well that may not find this powerful digital marketing technique too useful. Here’s one as an example:
A Business that is not Looking to Grow
Do you know how SEO helps a business grow? And what happens when a business grows? It gets more customers. More customers bring more sales. More sales require business owners to ship more orders and place more orders so their inventory doesn’t run out. And what does that mean?
Growth makes busy business owners busier. And for some people that can be too much to handle.
So, any business that wants to avoid the hassle of managing a growing business must avoid SEO at all costs. Because when done right, it is very likely that SEO may end up triggering excellent business growth which may take away the business owner’s opportunity to kick back and relax on days others work hard.
So, is this it? Three types of businesses that can’t benefit from SEO? No. There’s one more:
A Business that Sells A Product So Innovative, No One Is Searching for It
People sell some of the weirdest things online. Glow-in-the-dark toilet paper and buffalo wings flavored soda are just two bizarre examples.
Anyone who has managed to come up with something similar or even more outrageous may not have a lot to gain from SEO.
SEO builds on what people search for. And, let’s be serious, people rarely, if ever, search for things like glowing toilet paper and chicken wing soda.
SEO is all about capitalizing on the market you already have and channeling people already searching for your products toward your business to drive sales. If your products have no market, you may have no keyword volume, and because of that, you may not be able to generate an ROI big enough to justify your SEO investments.
However, anyone who has a regular, perfectly legal business, sells products or services that are not as bizarre, and is not afraid of the growth that is often spurred by a well-executed SEO strategy may want to take this marketing strategy more seriously and invest in it.
Why Invest in SEO?
There are multiple reasons why investing in SEO may be a good idea. First, it is cost-effective. Yes, there’s a sizeable initial investment. But once your website starts ranking, you get traffic without paying anything for the clicks, which is unlike the pay-per-click advertising model. Second, SEO yields long-term results. Yes, ranking a website is tough. But once your website gets to one of the top pages, it usually stays there for a long time.
These are just two of the numerous benefits of one of the most popular internet marketing strategies. There’s a lot more that a business can gain from a well-built, well-executed, and well-managed SEO strategy.
Landau Consulting, a NJ SEO company, helps regular (legal) small and medium-sized businesses execute powerful SEO strategies that are built to drive exposure and traffic – two critical ingredients in your recipe for online growth.
Landau Consulting has a team of SEO experts, web developers, writers, and graphic designers and offers end-to-end consulting in internet marketing and SEO services.
For more information about our SEO services or digital marketing, contact us directly.
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