This perhaps is the most frequent question by Entrepreneurs when it comes to Digital Marketing. Answering this question is difficult, however. There are a lot of factors that need to be considered before any good Digital Marketer can answer this question.
Now, it is the age of the Internet and many Digital Marketers actually believe that every type of business will benefit vastly because of SEO. However, this is not entirely accurate as these marketers aren’t accounting for real-world practical considerations.
When you factor in these considerations you will realise that, while a few types of business will benefit a lot from SEO, there is a set of businesses that won’t benefit as much to entirely justify the costs associated with SEO.
To completely understand the big picture, we will need to understand SEO and these factors that determine how much a business will benefit from SEO.
What is SEO and how does it work?
Image Courtesy – Status Labs
Search Engine Optimization, commonly abbreviated as SEO, is a set of practices undertaken to optimize your website to perform better on the internet with an intention of gaining higher recognition and building a better reputation in front of Search Engines.
Having a better recognition and reputation in front of Search Engines translates to them driving more traffic to your site. Every time someone searches for something related to your offerings, a Search Engine will display you among the top results.
The primary objective of a Search engine is to provide the most reliable answers to questions and queries raised by the users.
This is where having a good recognition and reputation in front of them pays off as you end up as the answer for the related questions the users ask. Search Engines drive a lot of traffic towards top-ranking websites and traffic ultimately translates to more profits.
What businesses really need and benefit from SEO?
Scope of Operations -
Is your business operating in the local market or on a global scale?
Businesses operating in the local market do not make significant gains with SEO. Businesses that are operating in the global market have a lot to gain from SEO as a good SEO will grant them more visibility the world over and thus, more profits.
Nature of Offerings -
Are your offerings digital like software or online services or do you sell physical goods?
If you’re selling physical goods, SEO will not bring much benefit to your bottom line. You could instead work on getting good reviews on review sites or promoting your product on social media or E-Commerce platforms.
Digital offerings and online services, on the other hand, benefit a lot from a good SEO as people usually search for online services and digital products on Search Engines.
Type of Customers you cater to -
Are you offering general products to the masses or specialised ones for a small group?
If your business offers a mainstream product or service that people often search online for then investing in SEO will bring amazing returns to your business.
If your business offers specialised products such as special industrial equipment or high-value items and services then you’re better off trying to promote your business on relevant forums and through business networking.
Level of saturation in your Industry -
Is there fierce competition in your industry or does it have relatively few players?
If your Industry is outright saturated with way too many players, then investing in SEO is not advisable. The costs associated with getting ranked in a fiercely competitive industry will quickly outpace the benefits gained in return.
But if there aren’t many players in your industry then investing in SEO will definitely benefit your business as the cost for getting yourself ranked will remain low and the returns high to justify investing in SEO.
The Stage of your Business’s Lifecycle -
Are you new to your industry or have been a big and well-known name for ages?
If you’re an already established player in the Industry then SEO will not be beneficial to you as everyone already knows you and will specifically search for you when they want something. SEO will only add to your expenditure whilst not producing returns.
If you’re new to an industry, looking to grow and establish yourself, then SEO will benefit you by getting you the much needed traffic to gain traction in the Industry.
After considering the above factors, if you’ve concluded that your business doesn’t really need SEO then fret not, we offer other Digital Marketing Services, specially tailored to cater to your requirements.
But if you conclude that your business does in fact need SEO, then continue on to understand how exactly will SEO bring benefits to your business.
Benefits of SEO
Image Courtesy – Digital Marketing Studio
#1 More Traffic = More Opportunities
Image Courtesy – Alexa
#2 Good SEO equates to trust and credibility -
Search Engines use a lot of parameters and stringent screening while assigning higher ranks to websites. You’ll have to understand all the basics of SEO to understand exactly how Search Engines rank websites.
The people on the internet know for sure that Search Engines will only provide them with the best and relevant results as that is the key to success for any Search Engine.
Image Courtesy – SEO Clarity
#3 SEO helps you better understand your customers -
Having SEO as a part of your Digital Marketing Strategy will grant you a lot of insight into what people are searching for by the way of analysing Search Query Data.
This insight will help you track and monitor market shifts so that you’re in a better position to recompose business operations or offerings to meet market expectations.
Image Courtesy – Reboot Online
#4 Good SEO = Good User Experience -
Image Courtesy – RapidLab
#5 SEO keeps you updated about the changes in the Internet itself -
The Internet keeps evolving all the time as the infrastructure capabilities, user requirements and demands change constantly. When you have SEO in your Digital Marketing Strategy, it helps you stay updated with every change.
Data privacy has been a growing concern for users on the internet and knowing about certain vulnerabilities in various internet protocols or bugs in website codes can allow you to fix the issues and not risk a data breach which results in severe public backlash.
Image Courtesy – Data Privacy Manager
Moreover, if there are shifts such as rising adoption of the latest technology such as VR and AR, or the rising effectiveness of Meme Marketing, you can become an early adopter and benefit from the early transition onto a new technological platform.
Be it Showbiz or the Business World, staying in the spotlight is desirable and profitable. Not being seen and acknowledged can quickly make people forget you and make you irrelevant in the Industry, your talent or value of offerings will not matter then.
SEO is the best way to stay in the spotlight and as most of the users land on your website because of SEO, you have complete control over how to influence their perception of your brand.
Image Courtesy – Publicize.co
With this control, you can get the right message to your audience which will effectively enable you to build a positive brand image and significantly add to your brand value.
These gains made in public perception, brand value and the control you have over the two can be benefited from significantly in the long run.
To conclude with
SEO is crucial and a Good SEO translates to big and a variety of benefits for businesses, but not for all businesses. The important thing here is to understand whether your business will really benefit from SEO or not.
If your business does stand to benefit from it, SEO will be as impactful for your business as Automation was to Email Marketing, otherwise, it will end up as a gimmicky asset that doesn’t provide returns to justify the costs for it.
We hope we have helped you understand and decide whether your business needs SEO or not and if it does, how much do you stand to gain from it.
