When they say Google is your friend, they don’t mean only Google but all the major search engines, including Bing, Yahoo, and many more. These search engines are the gatekeepers of the internet and have the power to make or break a website’s success. That’s why SEO is so important: for search visibility.
SEO is the short form for search engine optimization. It features strategies for making your website helpful, factual, and enjoyable for users to move up rankings in relevant search engine result pages. SEO has technical and creative elements that jointly improve your website’s user experience and search rankings.
Is SEO essential, or can websites succeed without it? Under which circumstances can your website succeed without SEO? I’ve compiled this post to enlighten you on this topic, right from the basics.
What Is SEO and Why Does It Matter?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It refers to the process of tweaking a website’s content, structure, and overall design so it performs better in search engine ranking for relevant keywords and phrases. It’s broad, with categories like:
1. On-Page SEO
This aspect of SEO involves tweaking your website’s structure and content so it’s easier for visitors to use and search bots to crawl. Common, effective strategies include:
- Keyword optimization: using strategic keywords and phrases within the website’s content, meta tags, and URLs to give search engine crawlers page and content context.
- Quality content creation: High-quality, relevant content that provides value to users can improve your website’s SEO. Content that ranks well tends to be informative, easy to read, and visually appealing.
- Internal linking: Creating links between your website pages and posts to help search engines determine the significance and hierarchy of content on your site.
- Mobile responsiveness: As smartphones overtake desktop computers as the primary mode of internet access, you need to optimize your site for mobile devices.
2. Off-Page SEO
Off-page SEO refers to efforts made outside of your website to boost its organic search traffic. You don’t have to log into your site’s backend dashboard to do off-page SEO.
Instead, this type of optimization involves growing relationships with other publishers and getting them to link back to your site. Some call it link building, with backlinks as the goal.
Backlinks signal to search engines that useful, popular websites trust your site enough to send their visitors to it. The better quality backlinks you score, the more search visibility you’ll gain.
Some off-page SEO strategies include:
- Guest blogging.
- Social media marketing.
- Influencer outreach.
- Directory submissions.
- Forum participation.
3. Technical SEO
Your website is a digital hub for your business, with a hosting provider, domain name, and content management system (CMS). Technical SEO involves optimizing these technical aspects so it’s easier for search bots to crawl and rank your pages and posts.
Some technical SEO strategies include:
- Optimizing website speed.
- Creating an XML sitemap.
- Fixing broken links.
- Implementing schema markup.
Your hosting provider should offer you a CDN (content delivery network) to reduce page loading time. Your CMS should also have features to optimize website speed, such as caching and compression.
Do you see why you need to factor in SEO during webpage design?
The Role of SEO in Website Success
Organic Traffic vs. Paid Traffic: Why Organic Search Matters
New website owners often ask themselves, “Why bother with all that SEO work when I can just pay search engines to show my website at the top of results?” While paid search brings in traffic quickly, organic traffic truly matters for long-term success.
Organic search traffic is very powerful for websites with effective copywriting. Most users of search engines will click on the first few organic search results, including the paid ads.
Paid search engine ads charge per click. It costs you money every time someone clicks on your ad. When your ad budget depletes, so does your search visibility.
Organic traffic presents a significant advantage in this area. It’s free, and it can drive consistent traffic to your website as long as your SEO is top-notch.
The Long-Term Benefits of SEO
SEO efforts you execute today will bear fruits in the future, even when your budget depletes. Some of the long-term benefits of SEO include:
- SEO efforts focus on improving user experience, keeping visitors longer, and boosting conversion.
- High visitor retention and conversion attract more revenue to sustain the SEO budget.
- High visitor retention and conversion convince search engines that your website is relevant and valuable.
- More organic traffic helps generate more leads and sales, resulting in long-term business growth.
- Through higher search engine rankings, SEO efforts help build brand credibility, trust, and authority.
- You get locked in a pleasant cycle of success, with more organic traffic leading to better rankings and higher visibility, in turn driving more traffic and conversions.
Can a Website Succeed Without SEO?
A website can succeed without SEO because not all websites have similar goals, and success is a relative concept.
Some websites aren’t meant for everybody, and their success is not dependent on widespread awareness or high traffic.
Examples of Websites That Don’t Need SEO
- Student portals with restricted access and content.
- Intranet websites for internal communication within a company.
- Landing pages for specific promotions or events that have a short lifespan.
- Portfolio websites for targeted pitching to potential clients.
The Downsides of Ignoring SEO
We recommend that you execute many aspects of SEO even if you fit one of the examples above. Remember, SEO optimizes websites by making them as user friendly as possible. It improves user experience and publishes helpful, entertaining content.
The consequences of ignoring SEO can be severe. Some of them include:
- Poor user experience, with issues such as slow loading times, broken links, and poor navigation.
- Decrease in website traffic due to low search engine ranking.
- High ad dependency as you can’t pull any organic audience.
- You miss converting and retaining folks looking for your kind of products on the internet.
SEO vs. Other Digital Marketing Strategies
Since 2008, I’ve always advised the hundreds of businesses I’ve helped build and populate websites to take on a multi-channel digital marketing strategy.
Such a strategy aims to reach potential customers via different channels like search engines, social media, email marketing, and more.
It’s Never About SEO vs. Other Strategies
SEO complements PPC, social media, and content marketing. Don’t pit this marketing strategy against other channels.
In fact, SEO can enhance the effectiveness of other digital marketing strategies by improving website visibility and attracting organic traffic.
Remember, SEO requires patience and consistency, but it’s way more cost-effective and sustainable than other channels. It’s a long-term investment for your business.
Coupling SEO with PPC
One common misconception is that SEO and PPC are mutually exclusive strategies. However, combining these two tactics can result in a highly effective digital marketing campaign.
PPC or pay-per-click advertising involves creating ads and paying for each click on those ads. This approach can bring immediate results, as your ad will top search rankings for specific keywords.
SEO focuses on improving your website structure and content to boost its visibility in organic search results. It takes patience to enjoy results from SEO efforts, but once you achieve a high ranking, it can drive a significant amount of free traffic to your site.
PPC can boost your SEO if your website’s user experience is already great. It can also dent your SEO if your website isn’t ready for the paid traffic.
PPC sends you many visitors who’d otherwise go to competitors. Users will spend more time and money if your site loads fast and has helpful content. Your bounce rate will skyrocket if it’s slow with irrelevant, inaccurate content.
Search engines interpret high bounce rates as your website providing a terrible experience for their users when they refer you.
High retention and conversion signals to search engines that their users enjoy using your site when referred to it, boosting your credibility and theirs as well.
What About Content Marketing?
This strategy entails consistently creating and sharing content that’s helpful and entertaining. It’s an integral part of SEO, helping drive traffic, improve search visibility, and ultimately increase conversions.
The main goal of content marketing is to provide helpful information to your target audience while promoting your brand or products. It takes many forms, such as:
- Blog posts.
- Videos.
- Infographics.
- Social media posts.
Most website owners use content marketing to establish trust and credibility with potential customers. So, publish high-quality and informative content to position yourself as an industry expert.
Future Trends: Is SEO Still Relevant?
SEO always responds to major search engines and their ever-changing whims. We can’t blame search engines for constantly updating their search ranking algorithms; after all, their goal is to provide the most relevant and useful information to users.
The Evolution of Search Engines
Search engines always evolve to keep up with digital innovations and adoption. For example, they existed when PCs were the vast majority, and smartphones were rare.
Back then, we didn’t need to optimize for mobile devices because only a few people used them to access the internet. Smartphones overtook PCs as the most popular browsing devices, so now search engines will heavily penalize websites that don’t optimize for mobile users.
Algorithm Updates
Search engines curate unique algorithms to rank websites. They frequently update these algorithms to improve the user experience. Algorithms need to keep changing for various reasons, such as:
- To understand user intent and publish helpful, relevant content.
- To combat spam and low-quality content.
- To adapt to new technologies and trends, such as voice search or video content.
- So marketers don’t exploit loopholes and manipulate search rankings.
With these updates, websites that were previously ranking well may suddenly drop in the results. Be aware of these changes and adapt your SEO strategies accordingly.
If you’re outsourcing your SEO, here’s how to find your perfect SEO match: essential questions to ask the consultant.
Voice Search and AI
An example of an algorithm update is the Helpful Content Update by Google. This algorithm was a response to the surge of AI-generated content on the internet.
Website owners started generating high volumes of content using AI as part of their content strategy, some spamming the search results with low-quality content. The Helpful Content Update aimed to penalize these websites and promote more helpful, human-generated content.
Along with AI, voice search has also become more prevalent in recent years. Smart devices have made it easier for people to use voice commands to search for information.
This trend has also affected SEO practices, as voice searches often use long-tail keywords and natural language instead of short, keyword-focused phrases. To adapt to this shift, website owners must optimize their content for traditional, text-based, and voice searches.
Learn more on SEO AEO integration.
Keep Adapting Your SEO
In an earlier post, I published a basic guide to SEO for beginners. In another post, I explained what small businesses need to know about SEO.
This post emphasizes that SEO is a continuous process. You cannot do it once and expect to see results forever. SEO also evolves as search engine algorithms change. Keep up with the changes to thrive.
