Online searchers typically tend to visit sites that fulfills their search intent and ranks higher on the search engine results page (SERPs), as they see those website to be more relevant to their inquiry. In the event that you have ever asked why some of these sites rank higher than the others, then you should realize that it is a result of a capable web marketing procedure called Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Web optimization is a strategy in which search engines find and rank your webpage higher than the large number of different webpages in light of a search inquiry.
Research by Oxford Economics for Virgin Media Business claims the UK economy could receive a £92bn boost if firms fully develop their digital potential. It says UK companies will add more than one million new jobs over the next two years by improving their digital capabilities.(Hemsley Steve 2015)
Benefits and Advantages of Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Adhering to key SEO principles and best practices is crucial if you want to build long-term brand awareness, expand your target audiences, and earn more revenue. SEO has numerous advantages for websites and can result in long-term exponential growth. Brands that invest in SEO can gain credibility and trust from their audiences, making it an essential component of their digital marketing strategy. Through onsite changes, the goal of SEO is to increase the quality and quantity of traffic to your website. This does not imply simply stuffing pages with relevant keywords, but rather focusing on core web vitals such as site speed, mobile friendliness, interactivity, web page content, and link building. Let’s look at the significant benefits of SEO for your business
Continuous Flow of Free and Targeted Traffic
Organic SEO marketing offers a cost-effective alternative to paid advertising channels like Google Ads. Unlike paid advertising, where you pay for each click or impression, organic marketing focuses on attracting visitors through unpaid methods such as search engine optimization (SEO) and content marketing.
By implementing effective SEO strategies, such as link building and keyword optimization, you can significantly reduce your overall marketing expenses and achieve consistent traffic growth. With analytics, reporting, conversion optimization, competitor analysis and keyword research tools, you’ll see a clear cut increase in organic traffic.
This is a definite way to maximize your business efforts. SEO will give you results and as soon as you start your SEO efforts, traffic will increase at a steady rate. Using tools to track traffic to your site you can clearly watch as more people visit your site and sales go through the roof.
‘It is assessed that there were most likely more than 2.2 trillion searches made in Google search engine for the entire year of 2013. That is approximately 5,922,000,000 searches made every day.’
SEO spur your business growth and give you higher ROI than normal ads
The Internet is a super huge place and the way to business survival in this commercial center is to secure a decent online nearness with your sites and other social channels. SEO have the ability of permitting your business expanded growth to up to 59% of purchasers who are utilizing the search engines like Google to search for a nearby brand or business. It’s why SEO has been likened to investing in real estate – the returns can be truly stupendous when you get it right. (Six SEO Rules )
When you get 1000 clicks from SEO, 4% of those visitors will convert into a sale, leading to a better return on investment.
This higher conversion rate is just another one of the benefits of SEO that cannot be matched by any other form of marketing mix. (Internet Creation)
Gives a higher brand integrity
Individuals assume that getting in the top of Google’s search results page , by doing SEO, will turn your site into THE brand name. You’re the person the contenders need to beat. The further back you are in rankings on Google the more individuals are suspicious about your site. Advertisements can regularly be viewed as irritating and many individuals have promotion blockers introduced on their programs. Longer articles, between 1,200 to 1,500 words, perform better in search, on average.
Martin Laetsch says. “It’s significantly different than it was two or three years ago, when 300 words was a pretty long page. Longer articles are getting more traffic, and they’re ranking higher in SEO, especially for competitive terms. The changes that Google is making, and the reason they’re making these changes, is to make sure they’re sending traffic to pages that delight humans.”
You’ll have access to data and the results will be ever-lasting
What information you may inquire? You get client information. You can find new items to grow to by taking a glance at catchphrase information and seeing what individuals are searching the most for. Client information is to a great degree significant in this business and is not that rare with the correct apparatuses. Controlling it further bolstering your good fortune can be exponentially gainful for your business. Dissimilar to ads the effects of SEO are perpetual. They don’t all of a sudden stop on the off chance that you quit paying for them.
Creates new avenues for small businesses
The World Wide Web is clearly one of fastest incipient markets in World economy yet it is not the unattended one. A prosperous SEO course will boost you find new markets and unravel dressy economies. Social electronic broadcasting platforms and aerial marketplaces can bring in your barter levels to a whole new stage by boosting SEO performance for your small business.
SEO is valuable for social media
A webpage with high rankings will also get preferably social media exposure. The liaison between SEO and social media is by-directional. Social media popularity is profitable for SEO purposes and SEO brings in a superior way social media visibility.
So, here are the SEO benefits in a nutshell:
- Steady increase in website traffic
- Being on top listing in Google, your website becomes the brand name.
- Low cost of acquisition and better ROI
- Compared to PPC and other paid advertisements results are low cost.
- SEO make you stand out among 1.5 billion websites on the web.
- On an average, 67.60% of clicks go to the first 5 results on Google.
- Beat your competition and take business to the next level with permanent results.
Must Read: Unlock the Secrets of SEO for Startups: Latest Trends and Strategies
Disadvantages of Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Is it possible that SEO has drawbacks? It turns out that there are! When you have a solid SEO strategy in place, your website will appear on top of other search results when you conduct a Google search.
It all sounds great: create great content, rank well, and receive free traffic for the foreseeable future. But are there any disadvantages to search engine optimization? There are some downsides to SEO that you should be aware of:
It takes a lot of time for SEO to show results
Presumably the most recognizable downside in utilizing SEO for business is the moderate time period for producing desired outcomes from each of your endeavors. The process of getting your content indexed by search engines can take anywhere from a few hours to days or even weeks. Hence efficient time management is a big factor in achieving SEO productivity. In the event that you need quick outcomes from your battle, then SEO may not be a decent course for you. Your results may not be consistent as how you want or expect it to be. Google algorithm changes very frequent, thus results are not consistent as you do your search.
Long wait to get return on investment ROI
It requires a long time to produce tangible results from your SEO endeavors, it is likely that you require a long investment to accomplish a decent Return of Investment (ROI) from every one of your endeavors. This may not be good for independent companies that requirements generous incomes in the short term, which they will use as spinning asset to maintain their proceeded with operations. Well, return on investment is crucial in order to determine outcomes on investments. You can calculate your expected profit or loss of your assets with the assistance of a free online ROI calculator.
To be competitive, it requires a lot of investment
Unless you do everything in your SEO crusade like pulling in backlinks and delivering , SEO truly is not a thoroughly “free” advanced showcasing apparatus. You may probably wind up requesting and employing outside assistance to manufacture every single natural connection and other SEO showcasing exercises in the event that you truly need to create generous outcomes from all you’re advertising endeavors. This is especially more genuine in the event that you are working and showcasing in an exceptionally aggressive specialty. Sometimes competitors or affiliates may use less ethical black hat techniques, thereby putting you at a big disadvantage. (Marketing Hog)
There’s no assurance that it will work for sure
Arriving on the first of Search Engine Results Pages will be a standout amongst the most vital objectives you ought to want to accomplish with your SEO. For arriving on the principal page is truly what makes a difference in search comes about, as 75% of search clients will probably never look past this first page and negligence the rest. Web optimization gives no quick assurance that you will arrive in the primary pages of search results utilizing the catch phrases you are focusing for.
Left at the mercy of an algorithm
Nobody truly knows the genuine intricate details of Google’s algorithm. What you think matters in search rankings (and what alleged masters are recommending) may convey comes about that are inverse from what you are anticipating. Just Google knows thus just Google has full control. You have no control of how much activity you will produce and what kind of movement you will get from all your SEO endeavors’. It’s very surprising from paid showcasing where you will get comes about proportionate with what you paid for. Consequently, the biggest disadvantage of SEO is lack of control. You are at the mercy of the algorithm.
You can be penalized
Google is always unpredictable with updates like Panda, Penguin, Hummingbird, Fred. Numerous effort put by a search engine optimizer to achieve a first page results may literally be ruined overnight because of being penalized from what this algorithm changes require. This is very heart breaking for a marketer to see all your efforts are clean swept and you are left with no clue as what exactly happened and you have to start everything from scratch once more to regain everything.
So, here are the SEO drawbacks in a nutshell:
- Getting results from SEO can take a long time
- Return on investment ROI takes a long time
- It requires significant investment to remain competitive
- It isn’t guaranteed to work for sure
- Being controlled by an algorithm
- Your actions can be penalized
SEO software tools practicing black hat may increase your website rank quickly, but once your site is detected for malicious activity, a complete downfall will occur — removal from search engine list, fall of rank, and blocking of ad serving networks.
Conclusion,
As explained already, SEO remains the best and undeniable source of traffic for large amount websites and should likewise be part of your overall digital marketing campaign. However, the SEO pros and cons stated above will address you with a much better perspective of how you can figure to “use of SEO in a better context“. This will leave you with a choice of whether to intensify more efforts in this channel, or its better to balance between SEO and other digital marketing channels – geared towards achieving your overall business goals.