Why SEO Is Essential In 2021

The year is 2020, a worldwide pandemic forces the shutdown of a large majority of local business. Where is the safest place for the majority of these businesses to setup shop, in order to maintain business? Of course the answer is simple, online. Moving business online has suddenly become paramount.

However, most of these businesses will not have proper SEO actively being implemented on their websites, and sadly, will just get buried so deep in the search engine results pages that they simply won’t be found or seen by 99% of searchers.

Because of the sudden saturation of online prospects, this also means a massive increase in competition, which will bury non-optimized sites even further. All this added up and it becomes clear that it’s going to take proper and consistent SEO efforts to make it out of the heap, proving the importance of SEO.

Making SEO a priority

You can already start to get a sense of why SEO is of such incredible importance for every business moving forward. SEO can rapidly prove itself as a beneficial investment as the results of SEO implementation begin to produce increased organic traffic, leading to increased conversions and ultimately, sales.

If you are reading this, you are most likely a business owner or someone that relies on web traffic for your success. In any case, SEO is essential for every business and entity looking to grow their online web traffic. Find out what the answers are to the Top 10 SEO Client Questions.

What is SEO specifically

Search Engine Optimization is a set of on-page and off-page techniques performed on a website, and the content therein, which helps search engines to better find and categorize the content on offer. This information is then used by the search engines to rank that particular content. The ultimate goal of the search engines is to match a searcher with the entity that best provides the most authentic answer or product.

If your website has good SEO implemented, you will get increased traffic and business over the long-term. The end goal of SEO is almost always to generate more traffic, specifically organic traffic. Organic traffic means actual humans who are honestly searching for the specific content or product that you are offering. Around 75% of people ignore paid or ‘sponsored’ search results, preferring organic search results.

In order to expand your business moving forward, getting in the view of as many searching eyes as possible is the absolute top priority, and this is why SEO is so essential.

How can SEO help a business grow

SEO is one of the biggest factors behind any business’ growth. There are many different ways that SEO marketing helps companies grow. Here are some facts we have compiled that portray the importance of SEO marketing:

Rank on search engines

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and is a list of website optimizations that are necessary for a search engine to search for and rank a page and page content on its search results. For example, if an article or product has not been optimized with SEO, the search engine will be unable to properly read and categorize the article or product. This ultimately means the search engine will not be able to display that article or product as part of its search results.

Ranking means visibility

A business will never succeed if it is not visible to the customers. Customers cannot buy from a company that is anonymously buried deep in the search results. A simple example is searching for a “Web Agency in Canada”. You can search for “web agencies in canada” on Google but it will only show a company if it has been optimized for those search terms.

SEO helps Google know where to get the company information from. The information is provided by the website and relayed to Google, and then indexed. If there is no SEO available, the website will never be read by the search engines.

Facts showing the importance of SEO

Here are some interesting facts that should definitely draw your interest regarding SEO marketing and SEO trends moving forward:

• The SEO industry is massive and, in the US alone, has crossed $80 billion at the start of 2020. Through 2021, we are expecting it to surpass $90 billion.
• Not to be overlooked, is the fact that SEO can drive up to 14.6% conversion rates – which is 10 times higher than direct mail and/or printed ads.
• 75% of all users on the internet do not scroll past the first page of Google search results. This really is an eye opening fact that simply can’t be ignored. Think about the consequences of a business that has never attained first page results. This fact alone should encourage SEO action on behalf of serious business owners.

Advantages that good SEO can provide a business

Here are some of the advantages that comprehensive SEO implementation can provide for a business:

• Improve inbound traffic – Inbound traffic refers to traffic that comes from outside sources: such as the search engines. SEO can help increase the number of people that will become a business’ direct audience, and helps expand digital reach.
• Allows targeted marketing – Targeted marketing or advertisement is where each customer gets advertisements that are most relevant for them. These ads are extremely important from a business point of view. SEO can provide effective targeted marketing and advertisement.
• Better conversion to sales – Sure, you can add traffic to your website without SEO by using social media channels and outbound mediums, but proper SEO – and especially local SEO – can help convert far more traffic into sales.
• Best return on investment – SEO, when done right, does not require a ton of upfront investment and provides an effective way of marketing. The ROI will far outweigh the associated monthly cost of SEO services.
• Better user experience – One of the requirements of building good SEO is ensuring that your website is thoroughly optimized for users. Optimized websites are fluent and fluid, retaining more users on the website. Almost 50% of people will leave your website if it takes more than 3 seconds to load.

Final thoughts

Google makes over 3,000 changes per year to its SEO algorithm. This means businesses need to adjust and make a habit of adapting active SEO strategies. Successful SEO is never a ‘one-and-done’ strategy, it’s a continual process of optimizing content in order to drive traffic, and increase sales.

As SEO continues to evolve, it is becoming increasingly essential for business growth and success. If you are looking for the SEO advantage, we recommend signing up for our monthly SEO services. We’ll develop a custom SEO strategy to help get your web rankings going in the right direction, which of course, is up.