Top 10 Reasons to Invest in SEO in 2024
From the title you must have already guessed that I’m going to answer the question of why you should invest in SEO in 2024, and in the consecutive years after that. I’ve been meaning to write about this topic for a while now, but before I go any further, let me put you in the picture.
Let’s say you have a business that operates primarily offline, or you are starting a new venture, and you want to extend your venture to the internet, because you have been told that online sales are the future, or rather, they are already the present.
The problem is that you have a limited marketing budget, and you don’t really know where to put the money.
All this Digital Marketing is new to you, and most of the agencies you consulted recommend you to invest it all in advertising on Google Ads and Social Networks.
Be careful with this kind of recommendations.
Paying for advertising is not bad, I have to say, because you get commercial results very quickly. However, if your entire Digital Marketing strategy revolves around paying for ads, the long-term benefits could be affected.
That’s why I recommend you to invest a considerable part (not all) of your marketing budget in the positioning of your website in search engines.
In this article I share with you a list of well-founded reasons why you should invest in SEO now, if you want your income to skyrocket.
Search Engine SEO helps to build your Brand
Pay attention to this phrase: YOUR LOGO IS NOT YOUR BRAND, YOUR PRODUCT IS NOT YOUR BRAND.
A brand, your company’s brand or your personal brand, actually rests on the experience your audience has when they interact with you or your offer. The name, logo, slogan or other such elements are just a part of the brand.
Just one example before moving on to the topic at hand.
When you go to a Starbucks and buy one of the most expensive coffees in the world, you do it for many different reasons, but not for its LOGO, nor for the PRODUCT itself.
You pay for the EXPERIENCE, which ranges from the instagrammability of the coffee shops to the status it gives you versus those who settle for a simple McCafé.
But… How are Search Engine Optimization and SEO related?
Branding and SEO are related through the content that people find when they search on Google.
It is not the same for a potential customer who is looking for you to find valuable and positive information about you, than for you not to appear, or worse, to find content that damages the image of your company.
You only exist if you are in the top-ten of searches.
Nowadays, the number of published websites is so large that it is impossible for any user to review all the results for a specific search.
In fact, there are studies that confirm that 90% of users stay on the first page of Google.
This means that if you do not appear within the first 10 results (top-ten) of the search engine, you practically do not exist. Here is a good reason to invest in SEO a part of your Digital Marketing budget.
I will go one step further. According to a study published in Backlinko 27.6 percent of search engine clicks end up in the first result. In contrast, only 0.63 percent of users went to page 2 of results.
In short, if your website never appears in the first 10 positions, it doesn’t exist.
Those with more mischievous will tell me: If I invest in advertising with Google Ads I will be above the organic results. In position yes, but read on because I have some interesting news about this.
Organic results inspire more trust
There is a study by Sparktoro that already has some time, but with very valid results, where they analyze the increase of CTR due to the growth of zero click searches.
This topic has always worried SEOs, but I’m not going to dwell on that, if you are interested you can read the article here. Now with the imminent arrival of Artificial Intelligence to Google, these numbers could get worse.
Look at the graph that Rand Fishkin published back then:
What you are seeing means that out of the total number of times a results page was printed on Google only 4.14% of the time (in 2019) users click on advertising.
The rest prefer to enter organic results, or don’t click on any results at all. The latter may be because Google gives them the answer directly, as here.
The curious thing is that this information is not “conveniently” told to you by consultants or agencies that want you to invest your entire advertising budget.
NOTE: It is true that Google has been making changes in the SERPs to make ads less differentiated from organic results, and thus increase clicks on advertising. Even so, clicks on organic results are several times higher than the number of clicks on advertising.
What is the reason for this difference in clicks between paid results (advertising) versus organic results (SEO)?
The answer is simple. People distrust advertising. They believe that the only intention of advertisers is to profit at their expense.
Instead, they trust organic results because they seem “natural”. They click more on the positions you can occupy by investing in SEO.
Monetize your website investment
Publishing and maintaining a website is not free, and almost never cheap. In fact, many corporate websites are “pretty” online business cards, and nothing more. They are websites without visits in which money is wasted without any return.
Let’s compare the digital world with the analog world. A website that receives no online traffic is the same as a showcase overlooking an interior hallway where no one passes by. In other words, it is a total waste of time, effort and money.
A good SEO strategy can correct this situation.
On the other hand, a considerable part of SEO actions fall into what is known as SEO OnPage, that is, they are performed on the website.
This is because many of the guidelines published by search engines guide webmasters to implement good practices in web development.
I say this as clearly as possible:
When you invest in SEO, most of that investment is in your own digital channel. That is to say, your website is more than valued, both for Google and for the users who visit your online showcase.
You can beat the competition on the Internet
When you search the Internet for any product or service, 99% of the time you will find many sites offering the same thing. For the consumer this is good, but for business owners it means a lot of competition.
You have a business, or a brand, and you see your competition on the first page of Google. On top of your website. They are probably already investing in SEO for your real estate blog or e-commerces.
They understood that investing in SEO is the right decision.
With a properly implemented SEO strategy you can reach a significant part of the available market. You can even surpass your competitors, although the latter takes time.
Of course, I’m not just talking about appearing first in Google, but about surpassing the business goals you have set for yourself.
Align your strategy with the needs of your audiences.
Every search engine optimization strategy starts with three actions that trigger the rest:
- The first is a website audit, to identify necessary improvements or optimizations.
- The second is a keyword research related to the business, or subject matter covered by the website.
- The third is an analysis of the results in Google, to identify the type of content most demanded by the audience of the search engine.
These actions are focused on the user, who after all is your potential customer.
The SEO Audit is key to detect errors or opportunities for technical improvement of the website. The better the site is built, the better the User Experience (UX) it can offer. Google loves websites that offer a good UX.
On the other hand, keyword research allows you to discover what your potential customers are looking for. It seeks to “know” what users are looking for, and thus discover what their needs are.
The third point, the analysis of the SERPs, helps us to discover with what type of content Google is satisfying users for those specific searches.
All these actions will condition your marketing strategy to focus on the user and potential customer.
The advantages of placing business and marketing decisions based on satisfying customer needs are well known. SEO done right is always aligned with a win-win marketing vision.
Avoid penalties from Google or other search engines.
Possibly when you read the word penalties you thought: Google will not penalize my website, because I did not do anything wrong.
To a certain extent this is a logical way of thinking, but only to a certain extent.
Penalties are not always the result of aggressively applying techniques discouraged by search engines.
Sometimes, not trying hard enough to do things right can result in a penalty, or at least a loss of rankings. Especially when Google implements an update to its algorithm and changes the rules of the game for everyone.
For example, long ago it was a valid, if questionable, practice to over-optimize (keyword stuffing) keywords in texts. These became dreadful, but they climbed Google rankings faster than Vin Diesel’s car in Fast and Furious.
Over time keyword stuffing became less effective. It can even be a reason for search engine penalties. But, the point is that there is NO exact measure of how many times you can use specific words or phrases in a text.
This means that, when it comes to content optimization, the line between right and wrong is very blurred.
Something similar happens with issues that used to be only recommendations, and today they are essential. For example, nowadays you need your website to be secure if you want Google to reward you with outstanding positions.
To sum up this point: SEO is, to a large extent, keeping your website updated with the best practices recommended by search engines. SEO is about doing things right.
Increasing qualified traffic to your website
Many people think that the purpose of SEO is to come first in Google, or other search engines. This is a reductionist and to some extent erroneous view.
The purpose of SEO, at least I think so, is to attract qualified traffic to the web with the intention of achieving certain objectives. By qualified traffic I mean: users who have an interest or need that we can satisfy.
Between Google and Social Networks there is a crucial difference, which explains why SEO is so good at attracting potential customers.
Social Networks are a space for relaxation, where people go to hang out. This means that people are not looking for that offer you are trying to sell them. Your publications are “placed” intrusively in front of them, and interrupt their leisure time.
On the other hand, people come to search engines like Google with a need that they hope to satisfy through their query. If you manage (through SEO) that the search engine presents you among the best options or solutions, then the transition from user to customer occurs organically and without friction.
Positively impact on digital advertising investment.
I warn you, this part is going to be very interesting, so I suggest you read carefully.
It is possible that someone has gotten the impression that with this article I am looking for entrepreneurs to give up digital advertising, in order to invest in SEO.
I want to warn that this idea, if any reader thinks it, is wrong.
What I am advocating is that you should allocate a considerable part of your budget to work on search engine positioning, without abandoning your advertising promotion system.
In other words, the idea is not to change one strategy for another, but to complement different strategies, all focused on the same objectives.
Having clarified this, I will now explain why investing in SEO is the best decision you can make today. In addition to generating organic results, SEO also helps to optimize the budget allocated to Google Ads.
But… Is this possible?
Yes, it is possible.
All ads pay different amounts of money to Google. According to the documentation, the place an ad occupies and the cost it generates depends on the AD RANKING.
This ranking is organized according to several factors including “the relevance and usefulness of your ad, and the website to which it is linked, to the person who will see it”.
NOTE: You can read the entire reference at the following link: About ad position and ranking.
I explain. Google evaluates the quality and relevance of the target lading page, yours and your competitors. Then, it puts the focus on this and other factors and organizes the advertising and decides how much to charge each advertiser.
Given this, a scenario in which your advertising goes out before your competitors’, and you pay less than them, is entirely possible. Praise the SEO that cares about the quality and relevance of your website.
SEO has a very positive ROI
Surely you already know that ROI stands for Return On Investment, which means in Spanish: RETURN ON INVESTMENT.
This variable, if you can call it that, establishes the relationship between the benefits obtained and the investment made to achieve them. It is very important to observe the ROI of all our Digital Marketing actions, as this metric informs us about the return we are getting from our investments.
Imagine that after implementing a certain marketing strategy your income increases by 2 million pesos.
Amazing, isn’t it?
Well… it depends.
If to reach that level of turnover you had to invest 3 million then you actually lost money.
To carry out an SEO Strategy you also need to invest money. SEO is not free. However, it is one of the Digital Marketing disciplines that provides the highest ROI. When you manage to position an attractive content for a keyword of interest and with many searches, you will begin to bring traffic to the website in a stable way.
Also, keep in mind that, if for some reason, you have to abandon your SEO strategy, the results you have achieved up to that moment will last, at least, for a while.
This does not happen with advertising; if you stop paying, you disappear from Google.
Summary: 10 reasons to invest in SEO in 2020
We have reached the end of this mega article.
It always happens to me the same, I want to write a short text on a specific topic, but in my eagerness to share with you all my knowledge I extend and end up typing more than 2500 words.
This time I tried to explain why it is a good decision to allocate part of your budget to SEO. I put all the reasons together below, so you can take a look before you go to read other articles.
The 10 reasons to invest in SEO an important part of your marketing budget by 2020:
- SEO is of great help to build Brand.
- You only exist if you’re in the top-ten of searches
- Organic results inspire more trust
- It gives you a return on your website investment
- You can outperform the competition on the Internet
- Align your strategy with the needs of your audiences
- Avoid penalties from Google or other search engines
- Increase qualified traffic to your website
- Positively impacts your digital advertising spend
- SEO has a very positive ROI
After reviewing the list, if you think I am missing a point leave me a comment and I will gladly add it to the list.
Don’t forget to share the content in your Social Networks, or send it to an entrepreneur friend that you think has problems with the performance of their Digital Marketing budget.
If, on the other hand, these reasons convinced you and you decide to invest in SEO, contact me right now.
We can start with an audit, and from there set the positioning strategy that will help you improve the results of your business on the Internet.
