In a recent article in Forbes, written by Steve Olenski, called 7 Reasons Why Your Business Should Invest In SEO, he points out some really interesting facts. Read full article here.
He says,” Google the term “Is SEO dead?” and what comes back in return is over 44 million references including the aptly titled article of the same name by fellow Forbes contributor Jayson DeMers. In his article DeMers shares a conversation he had with Sam McRoberts, CEO of VUDU Marketing and a widely published expert in the SEO field.
When queried if in fact SEO is dead, McRoberts said “SEO is far from dead” but added the caveat that “it’s changed so drastically that people really need to learn to think of it as less of a marketing tactic, and more of a branding play.”
So what exactly does Olenski believe?
Well, for one thing – he doesn’t believe SEO is dead at all. In fact, he says in his article that, “Investing in organic SEO is more important now than ever before, despite the current difficulty everyone finds themselves facing regarding the lack of organic keyword data and traffic. Your business definitely needs to have an SEO strategy in place if you are interested in succeeding in terms of online marketing; it remains one of the single most important components of any organization’s branding efforts and online presence.
He went on to cite seven important reasons why he believes SEO is far from dead.
- It still works
- It is not going to stop working any time soon
- It is cost-effective
- Search engines grabbing more market share
- Rise of mobile bandwidth and local search optimization
- Not having a healthy content profile is damaging
- Your competitors are doing it
The two I found most thought provoking were:
#4 – Search engines grabbing more market share – Somewhere between 80-90% of customers now check online reviews prior to making a purchase, and this number is only expected to increase. It won’t be long before virtually everyone is searching for products and services online. Do you want them to be able to locate your business, or not? Without organic SEO in place, people will have a very hard time finding you and will instead find your competitors.
Between 80 to 90 percent is huge. I know I always research online. In fact, we had someone come from one of the big air conditioning/heating companies to our home to give us a quote on replacing our heating and air conditioning units. He left us with a quote of $20,000 and two dropped jaws. It didn’t take us long to search online and find better prices and different companies.
#6 – Not having a healthy content profile is damaging – With each and every update to its search algorithm, Google and other engines change the way they look at websites. Things which didn’t exist a few years ago, such as social media indicators, are now given fairly high importance in terms of their impact on your rankings. Not building a healthy content profile spread out months and years is potentially damaging to your business, as it is one of the factors Google evaluates when looking at your site.
No rest for the weary. Just because you’ve done a bang up job on your SEO a couple of years ago does not mean that you’ve finished SEO and can check it off of your ‘to do’ list. First page rankings on the major search engines is a very competitive business. Just because you invested time and money to get your business to the first page does not mean your work is over. Now the fun part starts. You need to keep abreast of Google’s algorithm changes and adjust your SEO practices to meet the new demands.
So what do you think? Is SEO dead? Share your thoughts.