Why you should be worried about your SEO

SEO isn’t new. There are professional developers working now who were born after SEO became a thing. We all know want it does, how it can benefit a business and even sort of how it works. Search engines aren’t going anywhere, so SEO will be a factor in how many people can and do find your website for the rest of its life. But the fact remains that nearly ½ of all small businesses spend zero time or money on SEO marketing.

Mostly, this is down thinking that the results would not be worth the time and money it would take to get them. Generally speaking, this simply isn’t true. But more specifically:

• There is more competition for search results ever year. At the turn of the century, there were around 17 million active websites. By 2018 there were 1.8 billion. Every year that goes by without spending some effort on your SEO puts you farther behind the pack.
• You need to work on tour SEO not just for computer users but specifically for smart phone users. Google specifically penalises websites that aren’t mobile-friendly. In short, that means an adaptive site is now part of your SEO strategy, like it or not.
• You need not only SEO but also SEO-friendly content to really do well on Google these days. If you want to rank for certain keywords, make sure you write content about those keywords, not just content which ‘contains’ them. Google can tell. If you can write (or buy) content that is relevant to your keywords and is the kind of thing people find helpful – something people might share on social media – Google likes it even better.
• Good SEO does more than drag in more traffic. It brings higher quality traffic. But what is ‘high quality’ traffic? You decide. Do you just want to get your brand story out? Do you want to attract people whoa re ready to buy your goods and services today? Are you trying to establish yourself as a thought leader in a field, or as a subject matter expert? Each goal will target a different type of visitor, and therefore has a different definition of ‘good SEO’.
• If you are targeting leads, SEO is excellent at delivering them. Hubspot recently published survey results that 60% of marketers now believe their best leads come from SEO ad content marketing. By comparison less than 20% felt that their best leads come from outbound practices. SEO marketing brings in customers. Really.
• SEO doesn’t just bring in more traffic. It doesn’t just bring in more actual leads. It does all that while actually reducing the cost per lead of your marketing efforts. According to SurveyAnyPlace.com, content marketing and SEO marketing deliver leads at an average of $14 apiece. Display advertising costs about $70 per lead. It works better, it works faster and it works cheaper.

So, let’s see. SEO marketing definitely works, definitely brings in more leads, and does it for less money per lead too. Yeah, if you aren’t doing SEO marketing, you really do need to worry about your SEO.