Proving the Value of SEO

What does the future of SEO really look like? Is SEO going to die? Does SEO yield any valuable results? — You are probably reading this article because of one of these questions. It might feel like an uphill battle to consistently answer these questions especially when it involves discussing SEO with higher executives. Here’s how you can prove the value of SEO for your business:

Search engines are becoming smarter which makes SEO an ever-evolving digital channel. We notice these changes in our day-to-day work at PMG. Nowadays, SEO is much more than technical and on-page tactics as there is a heavy focus on content marketing and improving the user experience. This is also evident in Google’s major updates last year that included zero-result SERPs, mobile-first index, mobile responsive sites with the creation of Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) and Progressive Web Apps (PWA), and of course, the most talked about, the mobile page speed update.

These updates reflect the direction Google is heading towards which is to better understand user intent and provide results fast and efficiently. With this, SEO has become even more valuable in helping build ‘smart’ websites with the right content and well-thought-out navigation for both users and crawlers.

These tactics drive brand exposure and repeated visits to your website, ultimately helping businesses attain their top and mid-funnel marketing goals. In today’s world, building a website is not enough; you need to be able to sustain a good website and this is where SEO comes into play.

Slowly and steadily we are moving towards the “conversational era” – an era where we will find ourselves naturally conversing with our systems similar to interacting with humans. In fact, Google reports that 70% of searches on Google Assistant use natural language. Furthermore, a study by Think with Google states, “41% of people who own a voice-activated speaker say it feels like talking to a friend or another person.” Voice searches use information on search engine result pages (SERP) to find responses; making SEO extremely important for your online presence. You may be wondering how SEO relates to all this? Well, SEO comes into play because the overall health of your site and on-page content must be personalized and structured for voice optimization.

Suggested Reading: Identifying the Latest Opportunities in Voice Search

For example, we’ve been recommending our clients to optimize their content in a question-and-answer format. This helps them earn more snippets, which means greater visibility on the SERP while optimizing for voice.

SEO is valuable in helping your business adapt quickly to changes in voice search. The brands that take advantage of SEO now will see benefits from this new technology in the future.

SEO impacts the bottom line in the long-run, unlike other marketing tactics that lead to short-term gains. A successful paid search campaign done right now will result in immediate earnings but the moment that campaign stops, there will be a steady decline in traffic and revenue. SEO, on the other hand, leads to incremental increases in ROI over time for every dollar spent now. It is therefore recommended that paid and organic search tactics are done side-by-side which will yield to greater benefits for brands.

A typical site sees anywhere from 10% to 40% of digital revenue coming just from organic search. Hence, brands looking to invest in SEO must be ready to see its value accumulate over time rather than immediately.

The world of SEO is changing and changing fast, but this should not keep brands from seeing its value. Constant updates in search engine algorithms have changed the way SEO is done today, and a successful SEO strategy must take into account content marketing and user experience best practices as this will lead to an increase in brand exposure.

In addition, the rise of voice search will make SEO an essential part of every digital strategy, but especially for brands who want to reach voice search users. Brands investing in organic search must also understand that SEO is a long-term gain and results won’t be seen overnight. As search engine optimizations work to improve the entire search experience for users it also offers brands a unique opportunity to be more involved in the entire search process from the time a user finds a brand on a search results page (SERP) to navigating your website then finally converting.

Suggested Reading: How to Optimize For Rich Snippets