SEO is one of those millennial business terms that everyone’s heard, but that most people don’t know much, if anything, about.
On the one hand, SEO has something to do with boosting your website’s visibility on Google. On the other hand, the art of SEO seems so arcane and strange, filled with weird terminology and experts who probably stare into crystal balls to make their assessments, that it can be a headache just thinking about.
The reality is, however, that it’s simply all but impossible to run a successful business in the current day and age, without investing in adequate SEO procedures, and understanding why your business needs SEO. Because it does.
Here are just a few of the reasons why your business needs an SEO expert on the job.
SEO is essential to getting your website seen by prospective clients
It’s impossible to sell to your prospective clients if you’re invisible to them. It’s also impossible to market to them if all of the promotional materials that you come up with are left locked in a dark room somewhere with no one to see them or be convinced by their witty logic.
SEO is fundamentally about boosting your rankings on Google, and while this may not seem critically important at first glance, consider the fact that very few people who are searching for a business or service will ever even click through to the second page of Google’s results.
What’s more, according to some sources, the first two links on the first page of Google will get about 50% of all clicks.
In other words, if you don’t rank well on Google for at least some of your keywords of choice, you are pretty much as good as invisible to all of your prospective clients.
In the digital age, online marketing is vital
Once upon a time, all marketing was done offline (obviously). This meant that people would find out about businesses through catalogues, fliers, billboards, and so on.
Most importantly, perhaps, people would tend to use businesses in their local area, on the high street of their town, and which their friends could recommend to them personally.
Today, fliers and billboards still exist, but very few other than the most wealthy and established companies will succeed in drawing much attention to themselves via these “traditional” marketing methods.
What’s more, the internet has opened up the world for business. People are no longer obligated to give their custom to the businesses nearest to their homes, but can order goods from across the country, and receive services entirely through the web.
What this means is that, today, online marketing is vital and should by no means be underestimated or overlooked.
SEO is the most fundamental component in online marketing, not to mention the key that allows your marketing efforts to be seen, in the first place.
A poorly understood application of SEO can leave you blacklisted by Google
Once upon a time, it was common practice for businesses to try and boost their SEO rankings by creating posts and dummy websites filled with nothing but their keyword of choice, spammed over and over and over and over again, and linked to their primary business site.
This might have worked in the early days of Google, for a minute or so, but today this kind of practice will get you savagely blacklisted by Google’s algorithm and dropped off the face of the internet altogether, so that no one will ever know your website is out there at all.
This is a somewhat extreme example, but the basic point is that SEO is a bit of an art, and it pays to have somewhat proficient in it on hand to help you out. Trying to stumble through it with a poor grasp of the process may do more harm than good.
SEO can bring the clients to you and reduce your need for explicit marketing
One of the great things about SEO is that it acts almost as a form of passive marketing. That is, once you’ve set up your website, and achieved a good web ranking for it, people will come across it routinely and buy your good, or contact you about your services, without you having to do much at all.
Of course, you should still engage in appropriate marketing activities.
But SEO does remove some of the need for explicit marketing, once you’re well enough established in your niche that people can find you without you having to go looking for them.
