Who In Their Right Mind Would Invest In SEO? 

You might already know how important an online presence is for your business. And you may also have an excellent website to take your business to new heights. But is this enough?

Unfortunately, no. A website is not the only requirement to unlock online success. Yes, it is one of the key drivers of internet-driven revenue, but it cannot do much on its own.

Your online presence, your website, is almost useless if it isn’t visible to the right audience.

Your business thrives on a constant stream of new customers to keep its growth momentum.

Online visibility takes your website to your target customers and brings a steady stream of web traffic that comprises a large number of unique visitors or new customers. These people buy from you and contribute to your business growth.

A business can gain online visibility in many ways. But since an overwhelming number of online experiences start with search, search engine optimization (or “SEO”)appears as the most viable route for gaining organic web traffic and winning new customers.

But regardless of SEO’s star-like popularity in the digital marketing world, businesses remain skeptical of it. And it is understandable why.

There are many apparent “downsides” to SEO which often keep small business owners at bay.

First and foremost, SEO comes at a high upfront cost. Small business owners, who often struggle with tight budgets, fail to see the value in something as seemingly expensive as SEO. And so they ignoreit.

The reality is that SEO is an investment. And just like any investment, you need to pay some money upfront and wait for it to start generating a return.

Once SEO ranks your website higher in the search results, your business gains a good number of warm leads who are ready to become your paying customers. And when this happens, your website returns more than the cost spent on SEO.

However, this result manifests over a long period of time. This is why business owners deem SEO an unnecessary expense and drop it from their to-do list.

The time it takes for SEO to generate results is another one of the reasons why business owners remain skeptical of it. If we put money into something, we need immediate results to know our money isn’t wasted.

That’s almost impossible when it comes to SEO. This is why it tends to go on the back burner for businesses looking for quick wins, and they start looking for other traffic-driving options.

While not entirely useless, these other options are often not as effective as SEO. Yes, SEO takes its sweet time to generate results, but once they appear, they stay for a long time.

Once your website starts ranking, it continues to attract high-quality traffic and generate results for as long as you continue optimizing it.

Everything has pros and cons and SEO is no different. It might help small business owners to weigh their pros against cons and understand that many small businesses have historically found their internet-driven success by using SEO as one of their main tools.

People turn to Google whenever they are looking for anything, from a pair of socks to career counseling and everything in between.

If your business isn’t ranking in response to relevant searches, you could be losing opportunities to interact with customers out on the internet with their money, looking for a business that can fulfill their needs.

But it is okay to be unsure of SEO. It is a huge decision and being skeptical of it is understandable.

Landau Consulting, a NJ SEO company, offers consulting in internet marketing NJ and SEO services and has discussed all that SEO can do for your business with a satirical touch in this infographic. Check it out for a fun and informative read.