Why are so man small companies so quick to dismiss SEO? The excuses range from thinking SEO is not as effective as PPC and social media all the way to not receiving the instant gratification that seems to be expected with regard to just about everything these days. The facts, and the research however, continue to tell the tale. SEO is more effective than either of those two options and a well planned long term commitment to it consistently demonstrates money well spent and a noticeable increase in ROI.
- SEO can be carefully measured and evaluated. Long term planning on a SEO strategy will not only drive more traffic to your website but will bring you qualified traffic that you will not draw anywhere else. Driving a million visitors to your site with a PPC campaign is useless if only twenty are really interested in what you have to sell. Failing to have a proper SEO strategy just may end up costing you dearly in revenue.
- While PPC can drive some immediate traffic and should be used as part of an overall strategy, SEO can create and target for keywords and phases that will allow a business to attract potential customers who may be at different levels of the sales funnel. PPC will just drive some immediate traffic to a sales landing page and will tend to attract just specific traffic. You may see a larger ROI from PPC but it attracts just a fraction of the traffic that a long term SEO strategy will. Your SEO strategy will be wider and more encompassing with regard to who you need to attract.
- Having a firm SEO strategy in place will allow a business to be more adaptable every time Google decides to fix something that isn’t broken. Google’s recent “Medic” algorithm tweek is a perfect example. This “update” decided businesses should stress their trustworthiness and their expertise as well as authority in a particular field or industry. This update caused devastating losses in traffic, and revenue, to millions of companies especially those in the health care industry. There were even reports that the update drove many companies out of business. With a proper and long term SEO view, you will be able to pivot for anything even Google’s constant fixing of what doesn’t need to be fixed. Finally, organic traffic, as opposed to paid advertising, carries far more weight and credibility with the public. In the end, SEO boosts both your traffic and your trustworthiness.
-Written by Kevin Sawyer
