The internet has become one of the most competitive and biggest marketplaces for businesses of all sorts. In this digital marketing world, SEO plays a huge key role. It is one of the most valuable marketing tools and an integral part of almost every online marketing strategy nowadays, be it social media marketing, PPC advertising, or another form of online marketing.
SEO ensures that businesses are noticed by potential customers. It plays a major role in optimizing content and making it get to the top of Google search results. This allows potential customers or users to find a business or website easily and quickly.
However, SEO can go beyond just making a website climb to the top of Google search results or in different search engines. This is a multifaceted digital marketing strategy that advertises, sells, and builds a brand. Therefore, SEO is one of the most important areas of investment for both small and large businesses. This brings us to a question we get asked often.
Is SEO Still Relevant In 2020?
Our answer is always the same: absolutely.
Whether you want to get people to purchase your product or service, you need to use relevant keywords when creating content. This is where SEO comes in. Through various digital marketing strategies and techniques, it can drive traffic to your website and improve your local and organic search rankings on Google.
Google search algorithm updates and changes will have a strong influence on on-page SEO and search engine marketing alike. Nevertheless, organic search is going to dominate website traffic in the future. As search engines evolve and organic search keeps rising above search traffic, SEO will grow in importance and relevance. So, it’s more valuable and relevant than ever before.
Many customers who turn to digital marketing and SEO experts ask how quickly they can get their website ranking on search engines, and we’re always completely honest with them. Search engine optimization can take nearly six to eight months before you’re able to notice Google ranking your website, so it’s definitely a long-term investment you have to commit too. It won’t happen immediately.
Remember, your competition has their own website they’re trying to rank too, and keyword terms will change regularly. This is why it’s a good idea to start learning other SEO techniques, like optimizing your social media, link building, writing regular blog posts, etc. But we’ll get to that later!The world of SEO can often be complex, so understanding even the basics can make all the difference.
Trying to jump into learning everything about it right away isn’t going to improve your SEO rank. You need to take your time, read about each point below, and from there, begin practicing how to utilize these techniques on your own website until you become the SEO expert everyone will be turning too!
What Is SEO In 2020?
SEO has come a long way in recent years. Today, it goes above and beyond building great content and improving user experience. Search engine optimization came with completely new challenges in 2020. Even so, some basic SEO components left unchanged, including:
- Keyword targeting
- Organic website traffic
- Search volumes, and
- Conversion rate optimization (CRO)
In 2020, most SEO techniques rely on on-page content optimization, link building, and technical SEO. Additionally, digital marketing and social media marketing strategies also involve getting customer insights, optimizing webpages for Google’s snippets, providing unique research with various visuals, enhancing user experience, and much more.
How Effective Is Search Engine Optimization?
When used properly, search engine optimization can be very effective. You need the right practices and techniques, though. Some outdated SEO practices that used to be effective a few years ago are not so powerful today or do not work anymore.
That said, you need to keep up with the latest search engine algorithms and keep your SEO tactics up to date so that they will be generating traffic in the future. This is the best way to cause various search engines to find and rank your website.
SEO is considered to be a cost-effective way of optimizing content for search engines and ensuring optimum ranking. By employing effective up-to-date SEO techniques, you can outperform your competitors and build a solid online presence. If you’re not sure what to do or don’t have the time, receive help from professional SEO marketer
Why You Should Invest in SEO
Is SEO worth the investment in 2020? Before putting money into an SEO strategy, you want to make sure it will be viable in times to come. While some old SEO tactics are virtually dead, search engine optimization is still very much alive and worth investing in.
Here are the top 7 reasons to invest in search engine optimization:
1. Boosts your brand awareness
A brand usually becomes known online through personalized content and ads. SEO is one of the key factors in content marketing. With the right SEO strategy, you can establish your online profile in the field.
Your target audience is more likely to perceive you and your business when posting optimized content on a regular basis. That will eventually help you improve your authority, build a powerful brand identity, and increase brand awareness.
A website that displays trustworthy, authoritativeness and expertise will be more preferred by search engines than others. Once the name of your business has appeared in multiple places on the web, a growing number of search engines will outrank your main competitors.
2. Increases website traffic
Higher website traffic is one of the major reasons to consider investing in SEO. As you might already know, it is coming from people (your readers, users, or customers) when they visit your website and click to see or pay for your services/products.
SEO can increase traffic to your site by means of organic search. Actually, it can make it easier for your clients or buyers to find your site when searching on Google, YouTube, or other large search engines that drive traffic back to business websites.
Compelling SEO-friendly content will do a great job of capturing network traffic and bringing your business to life. With the right digital marketing and SEO methods, you will cause search engines to direct more people to your website without spending a fortune on expensive ads.
3. Improves conversion & engagement
It isn’t easy to make people take action. Before making an offer, you should have a good understanding of your audience and apprehend their needs. That will help you target the right customers. Try to engage potential clients that can convert rather than wasting your time with people who aren’t likely to use your services or purchase from your products.
The goal is to convert audience members into leads. Take advantage of blogging to see how many leads you’re likely to generate from an audience. Sometimes it makes sense to target people individually based on your estimates, however, this isn’t always the most reliable tactic when it comes to SEO.
SEO can help you identify the right audience and increase engagement by
- Updating online reviews on relevant websites like Google, Yelp, Trip Advisor, and so on.
- Improving your local ranking on Google.
- Increasing your organic search rankings.
- Optimizing your content and site through backlinks and local listings.
4. Creates a positive user experience
Your articles and blog posts should be tailored for both your users and search engines. That’s where SEO comes into play. Don’t overdo it on keywords. Keyword stuffing isn’t only spammy, but it can also make it more difficult for you to run a business.
You should always strive to produce relevant, high-quality content. It is supposed to read well, sell, inspire, educate, and give your users useful information. Make sure it really adds value to your readers/users.
Besides, your website should be mobile-friendly, super-fast, SEO-optimized, and easy-to-navigate. It also needs to be optimized in such a way to let search engines list and crawl it easily. That will ultimately result in a better user experience.
5. Builds credibility and trust
More and more customers are skeptical about the quality of products/services making it really hard to build credibility and trust today. Many people (potential leads) do the research before buying from a website by checking customer experience and reviews.
SEO can help establish authority and build credibility through optimized web pages, high-quality backlinks, as well as a variety of on-page SEO ranking factors. Once you’ve established authority and built trust, you will need to keep providing your audience with valuable info and engaging blog posts, guides, infographics, etc.
6. Complements social media marketing
While social media can do wonders for businesses, it isn’t always enough on its own. Social media is excellent at improving service interactions and boosting brand awareness. However, it is not effective at driving organic traffic to websites. That’s why you should combine it with SEO and digital marketing tactics.
Social networking sites, such as Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, play an important role in marketing businesses. Yet these networks should often be complemented with other marketing tools for the best results. SEO is one of the most powerful tools. If you’re intending to rank higher on Google, you will have to create and implement effective SEO strategies, too.
7. Yields higher ROI (Return on Investments)
A healthy ROI is, without a doubt, one of the most obvious reasons to invest in search engine optimization. For many businesses, SEO can yield a notably higher ROI. The key is to identify digital marketing strategies and channels that generate the highest ROI for your site.
Unlike marketing channels that only provide short-term returns, SEO can lay the foundation for long-term ROI. It can increase sales for businesses long after their pay-per-click ads have disappeared and their marketing campaigns have finished.
Conclusion
By increasing traffic to your website, boosting brand awareness, building credibility, improving engagement and user experience, SEO can grow your business over time. Eventually, it will yield a higher ROI for your business and increase your sales as well. But just remember, the keyword there is eventually. SEO is a long-term investment, so you won’t see results right away.
But, with the right SEO techniques and tools, you’re going to expand your market reach and build your brand. You should combine these strategies and tools with other digital marketing channels like social media, video marketing, email marketing, and content marketing to get the most out of your business.
