Why SEO? Why NOT SEO?
If you have a website, you might have heard of search engine optimization (SEO). Promising to rank a website among the top search results, SEO is the unparalleled leader of search engine marketing.
SEO comprises several techniques that help a website rank by guiding the search engines to associate a website with search queries using specific keywords. It earns a website a good reputation to make it more authoritative and involves adjusting its features to make it easier to navigate.
SEO has gained popularity ever since Google, the most popular search engine, started refining its search algorithm (the way it ranks websites) and connecting searchers with them.
A primary purpose for a company’s online presence is to gain more customers. But a website attracts customers only if it appears among the top search result pages; because people rarely go beyond the first search engine results page (SERP). Therefore, a website that ranks anywhere beyond the first page hardly ever gets traffic. And no traffic means no customers, which means no new revenue for the business.
That’s where SEO comes in.
By taking your website to the top, SEO earns your business visibility and attracts more visitors.
Since SEO also involves optimizing the website for a pleasant user experience. Therefore, it brings customers and helps propel them towards taking action in favor of the business, like buying their products, subscribing to their channel, or signing up for their email list.
So, SEO works together with a business’s website and contributes to its growth. Inbound marketing attracts prospects by conveying your message to the people who are out in search of what you have. SEO, being an inbound marketing technique, takes your website to people interested in your business’s offerings. It does so by building your website around phrases that people use to find products like yours and prompts the search engines to associate the users’ query with your website and rank it well. For example, you might have a business selling cars in New Jersey, and you have built your website around the keywords “cars for sale NJ.” Now, whenever searcher types in “cars for sale in nj,” Google will know your website is relevant to this search and take your website to this user. Of course, this assumes that your website fulfills all the other requirements to rank on the search results.
In this way, your auto sales business website will see visitors surfing the internet looking to buy cars. And landing on your website, they will be highly likely to buy from you.
This leads to the next point:
When you invest in an SEO campaign, you see ranking gains but there is another feature that comes with the package. That’s advertising.
You know how SEO helps a website rank for relevant searches.
Now, when users, who were out looking for something, see your website sitting among the listings, they’ll learn about your business. And when your website consistently appears in all their relevant searches, they’ll know that your website is authoritative and well-reputed to have ranked repeatedly. And eventually, they will click on it.
So, SEO advertises your website, not to random people who happen to drive by a billboard or walk past a flyer, but to people looking for things you have until they are compelled to click.
However, you cannot go through the pros of SEO without knowing its drawbacks and then determine if it can make you a competitor in the vicious online world.
SEO has some drawbacks that, depending on your marketing objectives, may render it unsuitable for you.
First and foremost, SEO takes time; it needs you to be patient. You cannot hire an SEO company today and expect your website to sit at the top of the search results tomorrow. SEO takes months, or sometimes even more than a year, to yield results.
All promising SEO strategies are built after a thorough audience analysis. They are based on in-depth market research and rely on specific metrics. Gathering such valuable information takes time.
Secondly, once you launch your perfectly-built and optimized website, it takes some time for Google to notice it. And once Google takes notice, it takes its sweet time in developing the trust that guarantees that the website is valuable and safe to rank.
So, if your marketing objectives require you to rank soon, you may want to consider investing in a Pay-Per-Click or PPC ads campaign that can rank your website the next day. It is a paid form of ranking and you must pay for each click on your website.
Once your website has gained a solid reputation, Google might deem it worthy enough to rank.
Notice the word “might”? This leads to the next drawback of SEO:
Even if you have optimized all the features of your website and your website meets Google’s ranking requirements, there is no guarantee that it will rank.
The SERP has space for only ten or sometimes even fewer than ten websites. And hundreds of websites are competing to be among those ten. So, it is safe to say that the competition is tough. And chances to rank with a mediocre SEO strategy, slim.
Finally, the most significant weakness of SEO is the changing search engine algorithm. And the worst part is, you cannot do anything about it.
Google changes its algorithm more than a hundred times annually. And whenever there is a massive update, many websites lose their rank overnight. The websites that were previously at the top can be pushed back to the third or fourth pages.
This shuffling of web ranks happens because, with a change in the search algorithm, the ranking requirements change, and the website listing is adjusted accordingly. Therefore, the websites which ranked according to the previous version of ranking factors plummet in the search results via the new algorithm.
So, no matter how much effort or investment you put in trying to make your website rank, a single substantial change of a search engine’s algorithm can flush these efforts and finances down the drain, bringing you back to square one.
Yet, despite all the drawbacks, many companies (including your competitors) still choose to invest in SEO. Why? Because the pros of SEO far outweigh the cons.
If you invest in services from an online marketing company experienced in SEO like Landau Consulting, a NJ SEO consulting company, you can minimize the consequences of the SEO drawbacks and generate profit that quickly repays your investment, making SEO worth the expense.
Once you have decided to invest in SEO, congratulations! You have taken your first step towards success. Now the next step is to contact a competent SEO company.
Landau Consulting is an internet marketing company in NJ and provides consulting in internet marketing and SEO services. They will build a strong SEO strategy for your online success and will help you take your next steps to the top. Reach out to them now by visiting LandauConsulting.com/Contact!