Does SEO Matter?

Frankly the stats are astonishing, every single second there are 40,000 searches for something or other on google. That’s 40,000-real people looking for a solution to a problem, or an answer to a question. That’s over 3 billion searches every single day, mind blowing!!So, if you have a website, actually hang on, you do have a website, right?! If you don’t have a website then you need one, it’s almost 2018, and there are over 3 billion searches everyday on the internet. What you don’t want more sales? Anyway, whether your website is to sell clothes, showcase your small business or just a blog, you want to show up on your share of those searches.You guessed it, that means good ol’ SEO comes to the rescue and should be a key part of your marketing strategy.If you were the online clothes store, or any eCommerce site for that matter, then SEO is where you live or die. The balance finally tipped in 2016 according to a survey done by UPS, claiming their customers did more of their shopping online than in stores, and a large amount of that was straight from their phones. It’s even been suggested that those purchases that are made in person are usually researched online prior to purchaseGet Found – Make SalesThe whole point of SEO is to allow search engines to understand what your website is all about so they can present you to searchers who will find the information useful. Google want to provide their customers with the best possible user experience, which is why it’s the premier search engine. They can use complex algorithms and based only on a few keywords, understand exactly what a searcher’s looking for. They want to display the websites that will best solve their problem, answer their question, or offer what they are looking for. It’s our job to help Google know when to display our sites in the results of someone’s search. We can do this by harnessing an SEO Strategy that let’s google know what you offer and why you are a reputable source of information. The key to this? Simple, create well-written content and add relevant links to your site which will help Google place your website with the search terms people use. If you do it right, Google will be able to match your site with your customers. In other words, they’ll push new leads directly to your door.For example, if someone is looking for a Graphic Designer in Corby — and I just so happen to have a Graphic Design Studio in Corby. Google wants to help that user find us, even if I were a 1 man band. You could think that I have no chance as there are a load of Graphic Designers in the area, but because I spend time writing fresh content and promoting our business online, I help google understand what our website is about and prove that our site is a quality one.This strategy takes tome, however eventually Google will start displaying our site higher up on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) — and this has enormous power! How Does It Affect You?As I eluded to earlier, if you want to progress your business, you simply must have an online presence. Creating a website is the first step, but if no one is visiting it, then it’s worthless. Shows up high on Google can boost your business, that’s what SEO is all about. The simple fact is, if you want new customers to find your website, you're going to have to invest time and/or money in SEO.Get RealBefore you set sail in an all-out assault on your SEO, planning global domination and all that jazz, it’s important to ground yourself. Following our tips and advice will increase your chances of success with your SEO strategy, but that doesn’t guarantee you top spot on Google.Unless you’re in a really niche and uncompetitive market, then getting up the rankings will take time, patience and often money. Many ambitious businesses hire a professional SEO expert to drive them forward. As the any business owner knows, time and money are limited resources, so you must plan which way you want to go.To figure out how much to invest in your SEO strategy, weigh up the potential rewards you can gain from having increased web traffic and how much time or money you will have to invest to get that traffic. Most clued up business owners will invest 10% of their revenue in their marketing strategy.Once you have a solid marketing strategy the next thing you must work out is where you’ll get the most bang for buck out of your budget. The online space is huge, easily tracked and growing daily. Other marketing channels have their values too, but are often more difficult to measure as far as ROI goes.The beauty of SEO is, that while it will require ongoing work, your ROI will increase over time with an effective SEO strategy. It is much more difficult to get yourself up the rankings when you’re a new or unknown site. But once you’ve gotten yourself up there, maintenance is relatively easy and the rewards keep coming.The Organic Search PowerhouseYou’ve seen this yourself, when you look for things on Google, they show you two kinds of results: organic and paid. The paid ads are results from companies who have paid to have their websites show up on the SERP for specific keywords. The organic results are determined by google. The organic ones are the sites that Google thinks best fit the searcher keywords.As I’ve already said, you won’t miraculously see result overnight, of course not. You’re playing the long game when you go organic, it can take months to show up for your desired keywords. When you do get there, you probably think you can sit back and enjoy the glory, right? Wrong. Even when you’re ranking well, you’ll have to continue investing in SEO to maintain your rank. But if you do stick with it, because the upside is glorious, the return on your invested time and/or money is incredible. Here’s the kind of badass stat I’m on about: for every click on a paid search result, the organic results generate 8.5 clicks. Better still, the higher you rank, the greater the impact.According to research - 71% of searches result in an organic click on the first page. Page two and three get only 6% of the clicks. On the first page alone, the top five results account for 68% of all the clicks and the results from 6 to 10 account for only 4%.AdWords (PPC)If much like my wife, patience isn’t your strong point, you may also want to consider investing in a PPC campaign (pay-per-click). With this method the results are immediate, you simply pay google however much the going rate is for your selected keyword and you’ll be placed right up top.Thing is with PPC there’s no long-term benefit like there is with organic SEO, as soon as you stop paying you’ll be bumped out, and the price keeps on being driven up. So PPC is great for short term campaigns or while you’re waiting for your organic SEO strategy to kick in, but it isn’t a long-term solution.Patience is a VirtueI’ve drummed this into you a few times already but I’m going for it again… Organic SEO is a marathon and not a sprint, it will take time for it to be affective. Google are clever sausages and not even the best SEO experts in the world have been able to figure out their algorithms to magically make your site show up first for your keywords.It takes time for google to index sites, note new links and increase traffic, and put a website higher up in the pecking order.SEO rewards the patient player, like Daniel Larusso in the Karate Kid, you got to wax a lot of cars and paint a lot of fences as it were. This work behind the scenes that doesn’t seem to reap any immediate rewards can, in time, get you to that elusive first page – if you can find the right keywords of course.Many small business websites can outrank major competitors if they’re willing to dedicate their time, energy and/or money to it.If you want to learn more about search engines and how they work then keep posted for future upcoming blogs.