Over the past few years many misconceptions have emerged concerning Search Engine Optimization. But which are some of the most misleading thoughts we have heard about SEO during the last year or so?
“SEO is dead; the social media guru proclaimed.”
“I don’t want SEO. I just want a good looking website similar to my competitor’s one.”
“Just built it and they will come.”
Such misconceptions still reside inside the heads of online marketing experts, business owners and business executives as a part of an overall digital mindset.
While I don’t feel sorry for the online marketing gurus that are just parroting the latest buzz words, tactics and magnify the above plus 100 more misconceptions, I do feel strong about my mission; My duty to inform the well-intended businesses that SEO still stands in 2015 at the forefront of investments for businessesthat wish to increase their online presence.
SEO is an Investment
We can define SEO as an investment as it takes time and money to attract quality organic traffic through search engines. If money and time are properly invested then SEO will increase ROI due to the following three critical factors:
Accumulation
If you are building a new website from scratch the initial organic traffic will be zero.
Even with websites that have been in existence for years, the organic traffic can remain quite low if no or improper SEO strategy has been implemented.
And even though this may sound very discouraging, in reality it is a very positive thing for small businesses that are willing to implement a long term SEO strategy.
The reason for this is the compound rate effect and how it relates to SEO. For the websites of small businesses it is not uncommon to experience a 30%, 50% or even 100% growth in organic traffic per year.
So, imagine that even if the website that you are working on has only 100 unique visitors from organic (SEO) traffic per month, it is quite realistic to expect that in 3-5 years this same website can have 500, 700 or even over 1.000 visitors per month. This can be achieved with the implementation of continuous “white-hat” SEO actions due to the compound rate effect that helps websites accumulate increasingly higher levels of organic traffic over time with the same amount of SEO efforts.
Multiplication
As users we tend to perform our research through search engines by using many different keyword combinations so as to fulfill our needs.
While there is no sure-fire way to know beforehand the exact queries (search terms) that each user will enter into a search engine; what you can do is take advantage of the multiplier effect and essentially rank your website for thousands of search terms while targeting only a much smaller subset of these phrases.
In order to achieve that you have to exploit search engine algorithms to your advantage. While this sounds quite illegal and black-hat all it actually means is to invest in a long term “white-hat” SEO plan.
A well SEO optimized website for a certain subset of keyword terms that are relevant to the website’s niche is going to automatically reproduce 100s of different keyword terms that your website will rank for.
Longevity
Anyone that has active paid campaigns, like a Google Adwords campaign, knows that in the moment that the campaigns are off, the paid traffic that flows to the website dries up as well.
In contrast, an investment on SEO produces long term traffic that can be retained, after it has been built, even with minimal efforts in certain niches.
Even in competitive niches the most difficult part is to grow the SEO traffic for early stage websites or for websites that haven’t performed any SEO actions for years.
On the other hand well optimized websites with active SEO management can dominate the SERPs rankings much easier for the long haul with a certain level of SEO actions.
In conclusion, the accumulation factor through the compound rate effect will allow organic (SEO) traffic to pile up as the time progresses. The multiplication factor will allow the keyword terms to multiple automatically and as a result your website’s “keyword terms army” will grow and dominate the SERPs as time unfolds. Finally, the longevity factor will enable SEO traffic to produce (pay) dividendsin the form of future – long term – organic traffic.
This trifecta of factors proves that SEO is rightfully considered as one of best investments for your business…and is still very much alive!
