A pretty suggestive analogy, isn't it?
With all those voices, getting more and more strident, claiming that “SEO is dead” and with the major “seismic waves” shaking the digital world (that the rise of the social media optimization trends have caused), you might ask yourself: what's the importance of SEO nowadays?
Well, allow us to:
- assure you that SEO is far from being dead
- inform you that SEO is in fact evolving into its better version, adapting itself to all the new challenges of the digital world
Here are just some of the arguments that we've put together to help you "stengthen your faith" in SEO:
IT'S YOUR ONLINE STORE/WEBSITE THAT YOUR CUSTUMOERS WILL STEP IN FIRST
Before welcoming your potential customer into your physical store, you need to welcome him/her into your online store.
It's here that he'll be looking for reviews that would eventually influence his final decision, it's here that he/she will make first contact with your products (with their more or less eye-pleasing photos and with their more or less relevant and creatively-written, engaging descriptions, too).
OK, so you can't actually welcome your online customer with a smile on your face (you can't be online 24/7 and you might just overwork a face muscle if you stuck a warm, welcoming smile on your face for too long), but you can make him/her at least sense it. How?
- A user-friendly, easy to navigate-through website is key (eye-pleasing colors, easy to read content.)
- A quickly loading website
- A lack of annoying pop-ups and ads
- An amazing user experience, overall, is the key to success
Needless to add that all these common sense SEO-specific techniques will rank your website higher in search engines results.
For your customer it will be pretty much like in this analogy that we've come up with: shopping in a store placed close to the main entrance of a shopping mall, compared to “enjoying” a shopping experience in a store as hard to find as a clue in a hidden object game.
BOOST YOUR BUSINESS CREDIBILITY
Although almighty Facebook might have, in your opinion, eroded some of almighty Google's authority, the later still remains The One who bestows authority upon websites (and therefore businesses).
So, if, due to your SEO endeavors, your website shows up in top 3 websites that your future visitor sees the moment he/she types his specific words into the search box and, moreover, if it keeps getting listed in that top each time each he types in other words related to his searches, as well, than he'll (even if many times unconsciously) draw the conclusion that: if Google picked your website and granted it the honor of being listed among the first ones in his search list... well... then it must be worth it.
Take the search engines as the ultimate warrant with an authoritarian voice that can empower your business with credibility before your future visitors/potential customers.
ENHANCE YOUR BUSINESS BRAND VISIBILITY
Here's a short definition of the “new” type of SEO: “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.” (Sam McRoberts, CEO of VUDU Marketing)
So, if nowadays SEO it's less about striving to stuff your website with keywords and irrelevant backlinks, so that Google should push you ahead of your competition's website, but about brand visibility, about a far more refined and nonetheless challenging version of SEO, it's more than obvious that: if your target users keep reading your brand's name, over and over again, as they search for their needed services or products online, automatically brand awareness is being build thanks to SEO.
It's the whole SEO strategy, integrated into the bigger picture of your online marketing plan, that actually makes this “miracle” possible: that your customer keeps bumping into your website each time they look for their desired products/services.
ATTRACT TRAFFIC
So, the “new SEO” is all about user-experience, about branding, about engaging content, but even so it still revolves around the same mighty goal: attracting traffic to your website.
The more visitors come in, the more chances you get to actually turn their visits into sales/subscriptions.
And yet, the real beauty of SEO is not even mere traffic at all, but the qualified leads that this traffic is made of.
Just think about it:
- you're not annoying your customers off by interrupting their favorite TV shows with your TV commercial
- you're not distracting (and annoying them again) your target clients with a flashy newspaper ad as they're trying to read a piece of news
- Your visitors already have a certain need/interest (“sort of interest” is gold, compared to none) in the services/product that your provide so convincing them that you're the best provider is already a half-won battle.
GAIN PRICELESS INSIGHT INTO YOUR CUSTOMER'S PROFILE
This is gold!
Just think about it: you don't (again”) have to annoy your customer with phone or face to face surveys for collecting valuable data regarding him/her.
Upgrade your website with Google Analytics and then you can just “dive” into a “sea” of highly valuable data helping you put together your users' profile: where are they located, at what time of the day do they access your website, what devices do they use, what products to they prefer, how much time do they spend on specific pages on your site etc.
Then, it's totally up to you how you turn all that data into fuel for your website.
IN CONCLUSION
The importance of SEO hasn't been undermined by the rise of the social media optimization, it has simply adapted to the new challenges that social media faced it with:
- it's quality content-focused
- it's user experience-determined
- it's brand awareness-driven
Good old SEO practices (such as non-overloading your websites with keywords and backlinks, having authoritative voices in your field linking to your website, owing a website that doesn't take ages to load and which is both easy to navigate through etc.) are more relevant than ever.
People will keep going online to book/buy/subscribe to certain services/products whether they'll be using their PCs or their mobile devices.
Wouldn't you want to be there, in the first row, greeting and welcoming them to your website rather than throwing all your hard work to trash (by focusing exclusively on social media marketing) and so giving the chance to your competitors to welcome them to their own websites?
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