Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is not an easy topic, especially for businesses that have “fared well without it, so far”. Many people believe that not having a website that has had SEO done on it is not a problem or a detriment to a business at all. They think that traditional marketing tools, such as social media marketing, television and print media marketing are the only way to go. They don’t have much reason to believe otherwise either - it is hard to see the benefit that SEO provides if you have not had it done to your website. So, in order to showcase how detrimental the lack of SEO can be to your business, we are going to explain a few things about what SEO does, where it provides the best results and how the lack of it can hurt your long term growth.
Lack Of New Customers
The direct, and most noticeable, result of SEO is the fact that your page suddenly ends up being on the first page of google search results. While this might not seem like it is important to certain individuals who do not know how the internet works, those who do, know how much this means in terms of new traffic. Being on the first page of a Google search, or any other search engine result is like having an entire page just to yourself, in the phone book. It will get noticed, it will get clicked on and many people will end up travelling to your website to find out what you are offering in order to be able to end up on the first page. In simple terms, this means more customers to your business. It takes time, but SEO is probably the best source of leads to your business.
Without SEO, you are extremely likely to not end up in Google, or any other search engine pages, at all. This hurts the number of customers that you get every day. While people who are specifically looking for your business will end up on your website, one way or another, those who do not know who you are and are just looking for what they want in general terms will not be able to find you.
Business Blunders Without Strong SEO
The best example of utilization for this is in the fast withdrawals casino industry. Casinos know how to end up on the first page of an internet search and get some new customers as a direct result of that. Those casinos that fail to do so end up going out of business after a while, as new customers are the livelihood of any casino.
The growth rate is also going to remain slow over time. While old fashioned marketing tool supply bursts of customers over time, SEO allows for a steady supply of customers that will end up returning one point. According to Bootstrap Business' Blogger Outreach Guide, the lack of SEO marketing might result in slower long term growth which might harm the company’s potential figures and might even result in the business underperforming, eventually.
Lower Internet Presence
Even if you have social media, the lack of SEO might mean lower presence on the internet. While social media is very important in establishing communications with the users and even in creating an online presence, nothing is more useful than a native website. Users like to go to social media, but having a website that is entirely dedicated to the company and only shows products from that company is much more confidence-inspiring. SEO content allowed for the websites to be easy to find and easy to access, navigate and understand. The lack of SEO for a website might mean that the website might underperform even for searches relevant to its name and might even end up not gaining the traffic of its social media pages, simply because other rival pages are clogging up the search engine results on Google, Bing, Yandex, Baidu, or Yahoo.
Lower internet presence also means a lower number of customers that return to the company for additional purchases, subscriptions, and referrals. No customer is going to try to keep looking for a website that they barely found the first time. Customers also do not want to spend time scouring their social media in order to find the link that will take them to the page where they can purchase the goods they want. Good SEO allows for the website to be easy to find and access via Google or other top search engines, and allows customers to return without having to think about how much of a hassle the process is.
SEO Like A Pro
While some businesses can survive and even thrive without search engine optimization, the majority of companies can't compete without it. Stay updated on new SEO practices and Google algorithm changes here on the Marketing Masterminds Blog.