4 Reasons Why SEO Remains Important For Small Businesses In 2014
When the search engine optimization (SEO) industry first started to find it’s feet around five years ago, things were very different than they are today. It was still possible to rank websites using blackhat techniques without facing much risk, and link farms were thriving. Sadly, much of this changed when Google introduced their Panda and Penguin updates, and it suddenly became much more difficult to achieve the same kind of results for the same budget. With this in mind, many people have been wondering if SEO is really that important anymore, which is something we’ll explore together right now.
The only real difference in SEO tactics used in the past and those utilised today is quality. Before, it was simple to make a website rank highly by indiscriminate links all over the internet. Today, this is still done to some extent, but the links are now wrapped within quality, usable written content, making the whole process a little more upmarket. You could compare firms that use this method of SEO to companies who pay newspapers to write articles about them – it’s the same thing.
Obviously, there are many more aspects to SEO, and most of them aren’t connected to link building. Ensuring your website meets all search engine standards is the main focus of your average company these days, which usually involves removing any bad code and placing a specific level of your chosen keywords on pages. Still not convinced about SEO? Here are 4 reasons why it remains important for small businesses:
Your Competitors Definitely Partake
Staying ahead in your specific marketplace should always remain a top priority, but this is impossible if you fail to use reputable companies like Calgary SEO when your competitors definitely do.
Google Is Constantly Changing
Even if you managed to do it all in house and rank your website in the number one spot on Google, at any time they could implement new changes and cause your site to incur penalties. SEO firms are obviously one step ahead with all this, so they’ll be able to alter your site ahead of time to accommodate the new rules.
SEO Is Ongoing
Just because you spend a few thousand on SEO last year, doesn’t mean you should stop now. This is an ongoing process that needs to be continually updated for the perceived professionalism of your company if nothing else. Stagnant campaigns don’t come across well to customers and clients.
Search Behaviour Changes
Whilst the most responsive keyword for a builders merchants today may be “bricks”, tomorrow it could change to “joists”. This is because people change, and so do their search habits. You need to keep on top of SEO to ensure you take action when any major alterations occur.
Presuming you’ve read and understood all that information, it should be obvious that you need to budget for more search engine optimisation within your marketing budgets this year. Some people think this industry is on its way out because of the changes made by Google, but they’re all wrong. SEO is about to explode in the mainstream, and you wouldn’t want to miss that.