I’m pretty sure nearly every online business knows or has heard about the subject of SEO. Whether it’s from the company that created their website or self-research in how to drive traffic to a website. I have encountered many examples of those that have started performing SEO then given up after a month or two because they didn’t achieve the results an ‘SEO guide for beginners’ had promised for example. Which makes people question the importance of SEO and can they get by without it.

Agencies, SEO guides or consultants can often scare you into thinking that you’re being left behind if you don’t ‘do SEO’. However, if you view SEO as a long-term digital marketing tactic as part of a strategy, you can compete and generate the results you should have previously stated in setting your goals.

So, the short answer is – Yes – SEO can be important to your business and will be in the future. The important thing is not to panic. Taking the time to have a well thought out long-term SEO strategy will benefit your business far more in the long run than a quickly rushed reactive SEO activity on your website.

Recently there have been unfortunate instances where clients have come to me because they been penalised by Google and their traffic has suffered as a result. This is a top tier example of why SEO is needed for online businesses. When a penalty is received, knowing, and understanding the cause becomes paramount. Some causes that can result in a loss of traffic include:

• Bad links
• Cloaking
• Keyword Stuff
• Irrelevant keywords
• Hidden Links
• Duplicate content

In most cases these are the results of bad SEO. On a side note, you can check if you have received a penalty through Google Search Console. Feel free to drop me a message for further assistance.

Rounding up the previous point, the importance of SEO can be highlighted in the form of ensuring the health and vitality of your website in order as to not suffer any loss in traffic. Because a loss in traffic, usually equates to a loss in business, therefore revenue falls are inevitable.

There are plenty of questions that can arise for implementing an SEO plan or strategy. Such questions as:

What will we gain from it? How long will it take? How much money will it make us? These are all valid questions because answering them further emphasises the importance of SEO. Businesses who are primarily online have a much easier time answering these questions.

If you still don’t see the importance, to quote a great SEO resource, MOZ – “SEO is also one of the only online marketing channels that, when set up correctly, can continue to pay dividends over time.”. I mentioned previously that SEO needs to be viewed as a long-term tactic. It is widely known within digital marketing that SEO has the potential to have more than 20 times the traffic opportunity than online advertising.

I appreciate that most individuals won’t be able to just sit at a laptop and perform an SEO audit on their website. I find that the time and effort needed to understand the basic SEO principles can be either daunting or give a sense of information overload. To help, here is a great SEO beginners guide.

SEO can get quite technical, especially when elements such as building links, page redirects, structured data, canonical tags come into play. It is wise to let SEO professionals handle these technical elements before you have an understanding of the basics.

Since Google’s algorithm update, many of my piers have put an emphasis on user experience as part of their SEO client strategies. I find this algorithm update a God send, especially when pitching a redevelopment website project or SEO projects. Placing importance on the user journey, analysis of data to make decisions via Google Search Console, gives SEO a greater importance when creating long-term strategies. With a great user experience, you are building trust amongst visitors and users. Trust is an objective every website is trying to achieve. When visitors arrive at a website for the first time, and their search intent is satisfied, they will often seek validation into the integrity of the website that they arrived on. Local SEO, review sites, strong linking building all aid the credibility of a website.

In conclusion, SEO is dear to my heart as it’s how I first started out in digital marketing, so there may be some bias. However, having witnessed, preformed and measured SEO campaigns, it continually proves to be one of the most valuable digital marketing channels for a brand. Neglect can lead to underwhelming results such as lack of traffic and even sales. You will find that an SEO strategy in place brings together other digital marketing tactics such as content creation, social media, website management, and even can support your email campaigns. Where possible, try to be involved in the SEO process as much as you can. If a third party is carrying out an SEO strategy for you, asking questions on aspects of the reporting will give you a better understanding. It is very easy for information and misinformation to go over heads. If you are a business owner, spending 10 mins a day trying to gain a small understanding of search engine optimisation will go a long way for your business. As opposed to being told that is it important and then proceeding to leave someone else go forth and ‘do it’. If you have any questions, my door is always open so fire me a message and I’ll be happy to answer.