It was in the recent years only that SEO came into limelight. However, its functionality is still not clear to most of the IT professionals. Whether it is a technical field, a marketing strategy or just a scientific approach, its existence is still questionable. So this article throws a light on what Search Engine Optimization is all about. What kind of growth it can bring in your business and how will it achieve this? Obviously, it’s not a magic so just don’t expect overnight success in this case.
Well, when I think about SEO, the very first thing that comes to my mind is the dynamic nature of this field. Yes, SEO is very unpredictable. You never know what surprise it will bring for you the next morning. So, UPDATION IS THE ONLY KEY TO SURVIVE IN SEO… Talking about its approach, it is a mixture of Art and Science; and, as far as its niche is concerned, it holds 50-50 shares of both marketing and technologies. This clearly wants your SEO expert to be creative, visionary and from technical and marketing background. Thus, this SEO tea needs a very special cup . . .lol
Years ago, SEO was known as BLACK MAGIC, nobody knew what it is and how it is being done. All knew just one thing that it can offer quick top results in just one night and things like these are easy for the black magicians of this field. But, it was Matt Cutts who made SEO Life tough. His updates and advancements brought a new phase in SEO and transformed it completely. Now, everything was systematic and everyone feared the Google’s hammer for all the wrong SEO techniques. This created the need for a visionary SEO expert, the one who has ideas and who can make users fall in love with the web. And, this made today’s SEO to work on the notion of THINK SMARTER, WORK HARDER!!
Till now, you must have got the idea what SEO is and what is its basic functionality. Now it’s time to talk about it from a business point of view. Is it capable of offering your business that desired growth? What all things it require to take your enterprise to pinnacles of success? There is a long list of such questions, which needs an instant implementation.
Being a marketing field, the SEO is said to be completed when the customers successfully reach to your products. But, your sale, revenue and profit will depend upon your product’s USP and the kind of services you are offering to the people. Well, here I am sure there will be a number of you who will disagree with this point, but this example will make things easily understandable. Suppose you are doing an SEO for a car repair firm and your garage is on the top floor or you are selling coolers and air conditioners in winters, may I know how much customers you expect from such an arrangement of yours. I think only God can help you in such situations and not an SEO expert. Right SEO demands the best use of brains and is not a child’s play.
WHY MY BUSINESS NEED SEO, WHEN IT IS ALREADY ESTABLISHED!
SEO is the marketing term which is dominating the web world since many years. Today’s users want comfort and quality assurance, which can be better obtained online rather than from a shop. As a result, ecommerce is on boom and competition is increasing.
Here SEO plays a vital role and forms an essential part of all those websites that want more traffic. You will be surprised to know that more than 80% of the web traffic comes from search engines only. Today, 80-90% of the customers check online reviews prior to making any purchase and this number is increasing day by day. And, this has made search engines the need of the hour. Almost everyone is doing it. So if you are not doing anything about it, your competitors will definitely overcome you. Your business growth with SEO will follow the following cycle:
RANKING –> TRAFFIC –> CUSTOMERS –> SALES –> REVENUE
Discussed Below Are Few Important Aspects of SEO in Business:
–> SEO Will Help People Find Your Website: In a search engine research report, there was one interesting thing, which stated that the most searchable term on Google is Google itself. This clearly indicates how lazy and childish our web users are, who can’t even remember the most popular domain name. In such a scenario what do you expect? Will they be able to remember your website? Probably not and this is where SEO comes into play.
–> Builds Trust & Credibility: As we have already discussed the role of reviews in our previous point, so it is very clear what importance they hold in building your site’s reputation. Something positive about your website will surely gain huge customer attention and will eventually result in strong customer trust and credibility. And, how will this all happen? Any guesses? Yes, you thought it right, it’s with SEO only.
–> Build Your Brand: Brand reputation is a valuable asset and marketers have to invest a lot of time to bring their brand on the top positions. Building it is a necessity today, if you want to increase the reach of your products and services. So for a stronger brand value, SEO is the major requirement. You can build strong brand reputation online by targeting your brand name and related keywords for SEO. Just make sure if anyone searches for something related to your brand, your website should be on top.
–> Drives Offline Sales: If you are considering offline sales for your business, then SEO is an ideal option. By integrating the online and offline marketing strategies in the right way, it can aid the company’s overall growth. As for instance, if you start an SEO campaign, which targets the traffic to a website that offers its customers coupon for its local store, it is sure to increase your offline sales.
–> Attracts Relevant Traffic With High Conversion Potential: If someone reaches to your website by searching something he/she need, there are higher chances that they will make a purchase. Also in recent times, there is the trend of local SEO and long tail keywords which provide the most relevant traffic. Organic traffic has better conversion rate than any other traffic and it can be tracked from Google analytics.
–> Cost-Effective Marketing: SEO has a reputation of being free of cost but it wasn’t ever and will be never. Either you need to invest your time or money; so in either way you are paying for it. However if considered in long term SEO is the most cost effective solution as once you ranked on top, it needs very less efforts to stay on the top and by now you must be aware of business exposure from search engines
–> Help you access new markets: If you are on the top results of search engine and you have good product then there are best chances to get random customer which could have been accessed by your competitors. So search engines are the platform you can trust to increase your product reach and boom your profit.
–> Results are long lasting: If everything is done right, search engines will love your website and your site will stay on the top for the years and by now you must have an idea of benefits of being ranked on the top. But never stop SEO efforts once you reach on the top as “updation is the key to survive” and keep in mind that your competitors are also doing it.
CHALLENGES FACED BY BUSINESSES WHEN DOING SEO
Above mentioned are the benefits you can obtain from SEO, but as you know, hard work is must for success and the same is applied on SEO as well. You will need to bear the pain for Success. Let us have a look at what challenges the businesses face when they do SEO:
–> Lack of Communication: Communication is extremely essential for any business to be successful. However, there are times when you’re hired SEO company is unavailable, or unable to reach due to certain reasons. So the inability to convey your problems and the communication gap can become a major problem for the businesses. It is necessary for businesses to keep communicating with their SEO experts to obtain the desired results! For this, both the ends must understand each other’s needs to remove this communication barrier.
–> Continuity of SEO: Since SEO is not a one-time thing, it will take time for the new businesses to gain the outcomes. However, in the process, many of them can’t afford the expense that it takes to continue with SEO, especially, when they are not getting the desired returns on investment. However, small firms need to understand that SEO can be fruitful in the long run even when it is pricing you high in the initial stages.
–> SEO is Field of Uncertainties: As we have discussed earlier, you just can’t predict what is going to happen next in SEO. The field is full of uncertainties and you can’t say what the next morning will bring for you. At initial level, it can be a bit hard for the new business owners to survive as search engines may change their guidelines after a certain period of time. Consequently, you may have to revise all your SEO efforts!
–> Content Management for SEO: We all know “Content is King” in SEO. And as a business owner it will be hard to get the dream content from someone else as anyone else won’t know your business better than you especially an SEO writer who writes for several topics in a day. And if you are outsourcing content from some other county, then language barriers will sure tease you.
Although these obstacles can hurt your SEO efforts but if you noticed there is one common solution to all these problems i.e. proper communication between business owners and SEO experts. Both the team should meet once in a week online and discuss the issues with best possible solution.
WHAT YOU CAN’T EXPECT FROM SEO
As stated above SEO is a hard working process but not a black magic nowadays. So it won’t be fair to you SEO team if you expect more than their commitments. This field is so dynamic that there are estimations for everything but GUARANTEE for nothing! Here are few things which are too much to expect from SEO:
–> Getting #1 Rankings for All the Keywords: Even after years of working experience and study in SEO, The bitter truth is that Google Algorithms are still a mystery and if you check out the researches, you will feel the odd behavior of Google. It stores a plenty of data in its database and keep updating it twice in a day. Therefore it is not necessary that your website rank on top for #1 for each and every keyword.
–> 100% SEO Score Everywhere: There are a ton of tools like Moz, woorank and Yoast etc. to measure the SEO efficiency. However I would say it is not a great idea to take them the only parameter to SEO success. These tools just checkout the basic SEO requirements are fulfilled or not and every tool has its own parameters which may or may not meet to your SEO expert’s parameter.
–> Be in the Top Ranking Forever: If you are wondering that you can achieve a top ranking forever then let me tell you “FORGET IT”! Google keep updating its database with regular algorithm change & updates. Also your competitors may be doing SEO for getting in the race. So your position in the search engine is unpredictable, NO site can stay on top forever.
–> Quick Boom in your sales: Gone are the days when magical tricks work in SEO. Now days no one can ensure quick success in terms of ranking or revenue but you have to devote a huge amount of smart efforts to get ROI. Drop the idea of SEO optimizing your website if you aren’t patience enough. PPC will suits your requirements if you want to see results in days but not in months.
FINAL FEW WORDS
Well! This article does not contain words only but our years of experience. The idea of writing this wasn’t to educate you in SEO because we understand you all are well aware of it and there are a ton of resources which can guide you better. All the efforts are done to correlate SEO with your business Success.
Success comes better when business owner and SEO team walks together. So it is our appeal to you all, let’s “FALL IN LOVE WITH RIGHT SEO EXPERT” to get sure shot success to your business ideas.