Search engine optimization (SEO) has been one of the most popular marketing strategies for businesses in the past decade, and for good reason. It has a remarkably high return on investment (ROI) for businesses that implement it properly. And if you follow the strategy for a long enough period of time, it has an even higher potential return.
So why is it that SEO is such a valuable long-term investment?
The Basics of SEO
We’ll start with some brief coverage on the basics of this strategy, so you have context if you were unfamiliar with SEO before this article. Search engine optimization involves both onsite and offsite changes to increase the likelihood of a website appearing above the fold in user search results. If you can get your site to rank higher in search results of search engines like Google, you don’t have a much higher likelihood of generating the traffic you want, and therefore the sales you want.
SEO itself is a bit complicated. There are hundreds of different ranking factors to consider, and most tactics require a nuanced approach if you want to be successful. That’s why many people enlist the help of an SEO service provider, so they don’t have to go through these steps themselves.
Still, it’s possible to run your own search engine optimization campaign with the help of an onsite content strategy, onsite technical improvements, and offsite link building. Given enough time, with proper keyword research driving your strategy, you should be able to boost your site’s visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs).
Why is this such a good investment then?
The Low Barrier to Entry
Part of the answer to this question is the low barrier to entry. If you don’t have any experience and you don’t want to learn the basics of SEO, you can work with an agency that can handle all of your needs. After a couple of initial interviews and onboarding sessions, you can pay your management fee, sit back, and wait for your site to grow.
If you do want to learn the basics of SEO or manage your own campaign yourself, it doesn’t take long to learn the basics. After just a few hours of research, you should be in a position to understand the fundamentals of the strategy.
After a few weeks, you’ll be able to start executing the tactics necessary to make your site more search engine friendly. From there, things get a bit more complicated; newcomers often have difficulty troubleshooting issues on their own and they’re not familiar with the latest experiments or strategies, but they can still hold their own.
The low barrier to entry means there are many costs to this investment. It’s easy and cheap to get involved, with minimal risks to the user.
Why SEO Gets More Valuable Over Time
As a long-term strategy, for a variety of different reasons:
· Increasing web traffic. SEO is all about generating more traffic to your website. With more visitors exploring your content and considering purchases, you’ll ultimately see more value. The number of people using the internet and browsing the web is increasing, as more people around the world get better internet connections. That means as your potential audience grows, so too will your benefits from this strategy.
· Permanent assets. Most of the assets you create for SEO will be permanent. When you write a blog article or an eBook, it has the potential to continue providing value to your brand forever. When you build a link pointing to your domain, it will stay there and continue adding authority to your domain until it is manually removed. Every effort you make for your strategy will continue paying for itself indefinitely into the future.
· Visibility and brand equity. Investing in SEO means investing in the visibility and power of your brand. More people will see your brand’s name in search results and more people will visit your site, which means you’ll eventually start earning more links, mentions, and offsite support naturally. It’s a snowball effect that can keep your strategy growing even without manual pushes at the later stages.
· Knowledge, experience, and improvements. We also need to understand SEO is valuable over time because the more time you spend with the strategy, the more knowledgeable you’ll become and the more experienced you’ll become. With greater knowledge and experience will come better approaches and further improvements to your campaign.
it’s hard to make the argument that SEO is the best marketing strategy a business can run. That’s because there are so many different marketing strategies available, and because every business is unique – and SEO doesn’t work the same for everyone. That said, SEO can be ridiculously valuable for the majority of businesses who choose to follow this path.
