It seems like everyone in the digital world wants something from you, business owners. You’ve already shelled out enough money for building and designing a website, for social media maintenance of business pages, spent on online campaigns, and so on. Why is it not enough? And why do I need SEO on top of everything else? Because SEO will make everything else you’ve already paid for worthwhile. Here’s why:
Good SEO helps visitors find your website
Remember the movie where Kevin Costner said “If you build it, they will come?”, well, it doesn’t work that way with websites. You can build a lovely-looking, rich and valuable website, but no one will know about it and visit it. It will simply sink to the bottom with all the other millions and millions of non-SEO’ed sites out there.
SEO enables your potential customers and other kinds of stakeholders to learn that your website is there, where it is and what’s waiting for them in it. This creates a positive feedback loop – more people visit the website - > Google sees this and understands that the website has good value for visitors - > Google raises the site’s ranking on its search results - > more people find and visit the website.
Good SEO streamlines your website so that it looks and feels more professional and reliable
Why is this important? Because your business website is exactly like the shop windows of yesteryear. It is your company’s shop window, where potential customers see what you have on offer and what levels of quality and professionalism are involved. If you present a wobbly website that isn’t stable, does not offer the minimal required amenities, has a messy architecture and order and has very weak or poor content badly-written, with typos and suchlike, it makes your business look bad. And not just to potential customers, who will turn to your competitors in an eye-blink. Google, too, will understand that the website was not properly built and does not offer a good experience to visitors. The result – a drop to the bottomless pit of Google search results and no one can find you anymore.
Can I do it myself?
SEO specialists learn about hundreds of parameters that can promote your site. They are often content-savvy and can help add or obtain valuable and generous content that would pull in visitors and create a buzz around your website. They can turn accidental visitors into returning visitors. They can help keep visitors on the site for a longer time. They can solve technical problems and liaison with graphic designers, webmasters, content providers, collaboration with other businesses, and more. They also keep updating on the daily changes in the field, to keep in good organic SEO form. They work on many websites and have lots of experience, so they can tell what’s really important to work on, what is a critical problem and what isn’t, how your site compares to others similar to it in different aspects, etc.
You may be able to learn and do all this yourself, like you may be able to learn how to build a desk for your office. But why would you want to? Your time is very valuable and expensive, and you don’t have enough of it as it is. You’re a professional in your field, irreplaceable for your business. Learn to delegate tasks to the people who can help you most in every field. In the long run, this will save money and make all other investments worthwhile, freeing you to do what you do best.