8 Reasons Why You Can’t Afford To Ignore SEO in 2020

Published On - June 20, 2020

Ankit Tiwari
graphiic image of man displaying laptop's screen

There used to be an era when Yellow Pages were everyone’s go-to resource for looking up goods and services in their area – not anymore. Web search engines such as Google replaced the Yellow Pages decades ago, and even though the internet has gone through a significant shift in the way it works, the way internet search results operate hasn’t.

Now, for a casual web surfer, the shift from Yellow Pages to the era of internet search may seem pretty normal; it isn’t. To begin with, the internet isn’t even remotely as fair as the good old Yellow Pages. Let’s try to understand this with how the two operate. Yellow Pages were neatly arranged in alphabetical order and gave equal and fair exposure to every business listing – which sometimes ran into hundreds of listings per page. On the other hand, web search engines such as Google cherry-pick a few selected businesses to display on the first page, which gives those websites a great share of online traffic for that particular web query.

But how does it affect my business?

A Chitika study reveals that over 60% of all the visitors who use the Google search engine prefer to click on the top three results that are displayed. To make matters worse, over 33% of all these visitors pick the first result! This means that if you make it to that top spot on Google’s search results page, you’ll be getting one-third of the entire traffic, and that is huge!

While making your way to the top spot can definitely boost your business prospects, losing out that spot to someone else could hurt you in just a week. This is exactly where a top-quality Search Engine Optimization Strategy comes into play. A website without a well-planned SEO strategy is nothing but a fancy signboard on a village road that almost everyone fails to notice.

To help make things easier to you, we’ve curated a list of eight reasons why you should put in place a highly effective SEO strategy to give your business that boost it always needed.

SEO Works

Most people who know little about SEO think of it as a marketing buzzword that takes away a large chunk of their hard-earned business profits while giving them nothing in return. A well-crafted SEO strategy along with top-quality content can bring in 3X the leads a normal outbound marketing campaign does. And the best part about it is, it costs 62% less than a traditional marketing campaign. In other words, SEO works!

You can take your business to that top spot with a robust, well-crafted SEO strategy that is implemented in an effective manner. It boosts your website’s organic search visibility, brings in more leads, and helps in converting them into buyers. And while SEO strategies are evolving every passing month, the core ingredients of any well-designed SEO strategy continues to remain the same over a fairly long period of time. This facet is quite beneficial for small businesses, as you can very easily tweak your SEO strategy and improve it yourself, rather than having to rely on a big, fat SEO agency every time you needed to make changes.

Consumers Are A Lot Smarter Than They Previously Were

It would be wrong to assume that it is only the businesses that have grown smarter in this era of the internet; the consumers have, too. In fact, according to a recent study, over 70% of consumers carry out some form of internet research about a business they want to do business with. Consumers have various tools at their disposal that they use – from independent, genuine review websites to social media reviews and recommendations – before they lock in on their final choice. And for a small business owner, it very well means that just providing your internet visitors a superb user experience or putting up a slick website isn’t going to be enough to increase your sales. A prospective buyer wouldn’t be able to buy something from you if your website is lost on the tenth search results page!

A major chunk of SEO campaign involves the craft of writing relevant and effective content for your website.

SEO Is Excellent For Small Businesses

The smartphone era has changed the way people look up for products and services online. Now, people can simply open their mobile devices and easily find what they’re looking for – instead of powering up a laptop or a desktop. In other words, people are looking up for services no matter where they are.

A recent study revealed that half of all web searches are in fact done using a mobile device. And to make it better, at least 50% of the users who used a mobile device to look up a particular store actually paid a visit to the physical store within a day!

This is definitely a piece of great news for all the small business owners, as a majority of them cater to a set of customers in a defined locality. So, any small business that puts in some effort on their local SEO strategy can immediately start seeing results, as they are well-positioned to connect with prospective customers who want to avail their services in that specific location. There cannot be a more perfect way to attract customers (and win over them) almost instantly.

Your Competitors Are Already At It

You should be thanking your stars if you somehow ended up getting a nice spot on Google’s search results rankings without having to put in any SEO strategy whatsoever, but it wouldn’t always stay that way. Regalix conducted a survey a short while ago, and it revealed that the fight to gain the top spots on Google is only going to get difficult over time.

You only have ten slots that are up for grabs on most of the popular search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo. And if you can carry out a quick keyword test by looking up some of the most common search queries related to your niche, you will notice that there more than thousands of businesses that are competing to get one of those slots on the first search results page. To that number, add the ones that are created every single day and you get a picture of how tough it is rank on the first page of Google search results. This is precisely why having a reliable SEO strategy in place is the only solution.

A Good Search Ranking Improves Your Credibility

A large number of surveys over the years have shown that more than 80% of the users don’t trust the ads, and rely on the organic search results on the search results page. So, when you decide to invest in a reliable SEO strategy, visitors are more likely to be pre-sold on your services and products, than when you go for online adverts. And any robust SEO strategy that is planned to bring more traffic to your site cannot be complete without unique, effective content for your visitors, which will boost your sales even more.

In other words, if your website occupies top spots in the search rankings and has relevant, user-friendly content to offer, no one can stop your brand from realizing its full potential. And like we mentioned earlier on in the article, a visitor is more likely to buy from you when they can spot your website on the top spots on Google rankings. A well-crafted SEO strategy can help you win over prospective buyers even before they lookup for your business.

SEO Is A Reliable Asset

If your sole intent is to get listed on the first page of Google search results, paid search advertising can definitely be a good option to consider. However, while it may seem like a good option, it isn’t exactly so because a paid advertising campaign can only reach up to a certain point. As soon as the money starts to dry up, your results start dropping drastically – making it a poor asset over time.

In other words, paid adverts are more like a rented apartment – you are supposed to pay rent every month for years, but even after you end up spending a ton of your hard-earned money, you’re not the owner of the house. Paid adverts are the same – the very moment you put brakes on the paid advertising campaigns, the traffic on your website trickles down to basically nothing and you are back to the first block even after spending tons of money.

Instead, if you decide to invest in a good, reliable SEO strategy, your business can gain long-term results. You can think of SEO as buying a home for yourself instead of renting one. SEO not only gives you immediate results, but it also keeps growing in value over time – getting more and more customers for your business.

You Can’t Afford To Lose Out On Mobile Traffic

A lot many people are increasingly using mobile devices to make web searches. And while this shift has helped in increasing user-experience, it is increasing the competition when it comes to businesses. This can be explained by the fact that most of the web searches made through handheld devices often return with online adverts, graphs, maps, and other elements that leaves very tiny space for organic search results.

In order to win this tight competition for high rankings, you should invest in an effective SEO strategy, as it can help boost your mobile search visibility to a significant level.

SEO isn’t going away

No matter what you have read in some puff piece article, SEO isn’t going anywhere – it is here to stay. Yellow Pages are certainly not coming back, and while radio and television are an important means of running marketing campaigns, they cost way more and offer way too little compared to what a reliable SEO strategy does. In fact, SEO is the most potent marketing tool that can grow your business exponentially, especially if it is a small one.

SEO strategies may evolve over time, but SEO itself is here to stay for long. Investing in a robust SEO plan hasn’t been so important before. Don’t think, act!

We’re a team of writers who excel at designing well-crafted SEO strategies that can help grow your business manifold. Interested? Just fill out this form, and we’ll get back to you at the earliest.

Follow me
Latest posts by Ankit Tiwari (see all)