In this day and age, people look online for everything. Just one online search leads you to the most relevant websites — but how do websites get to the top of the search results? The answer is SEO. Search Engine Optimization is still one of the best (and most cost-effective) way to advertise a business and get more traffic. This is why, even after years, it’ll never die.
Why SEO is Here to Stay
It’s a long-running joke that SEO has died, but in reality, the techniques have simply evolved. SEO can never really die when search engines continue to be an important part of people’s’ daily lives. As long as there are search engines, there needs to be a way to rank the results.
Traffic Increase
When you type in a keyword into a search engine the machines behind the scenes will look for that keyword in the search results – that’s a given. But, as we continue to create more advanced phones, watches, and cars that allow us to do internet searches, all of these devices simply add to the usual internet searching. This means that there’s much more traffic online and a greater need for SEO to go through all the results. As long as we’ve got devices searching the internet for data we’ll always need SEO.
Voice Search
Siri, Cortana, Alexa, Google Assistant — we’re talking to our devices more now than ever before. Searching itself has changed from a simple keystroke to an audible request. And that only means that SEO has advanced along with it. Now as people search using their voice, long-tail keywords have become more important. Websites need to be written in a conversational tone, so that they can be found with greater ease. Search engines will try to find the one website with the right answer to whatever you’re looking for, meaning that SEO to match voice searches is even more important.
SEO Is Everywhere
SEO isn’t just for finding websites – it can be used to find local businesses, as well, since it will find the result that will most likely help the person searching. It’s not just for Google either; many users make use of multiple search engines to get the best results to their search. Say you want to find a new restaurant with good reviews at a reasonable price: a single business can be reviewed on Yelp, Facebook, and Google by different users with different opinions. Not only does your business need to be optimized on those platforms, but as soon as someone whips out their phone and starts searching for you in their maps app you need to be optimized there as well. If you want your business to get more traffic, it’s important to try and optimize your information for any search engine.
Competition
Even if your business has been operating fine without SEO, the fact is that your competition is using SEO and spending money on it daily. In order to not fall behind, it’s best to begin using SEO right away, rather than catching up later. Since Google and other search engines won’t stop using SEO, it’s important that you continue to use it, as well.
Virtual Reality
As the concept of virtual reality becomes more prevalent, SEO will most likely evolve, but it won’t die out since the fundamentals of searching will remain the same. Content will always be the most important thing, even if new technologies allow you to open up new forms of marketing. Just by getting involved in VR opportunities and using SEO to your advantage, you are able to increase your visibility.
People say SEO is dying, but what many people fail to understand is that there’s just no way SEO can die. As long as search engines are around, there needs to be a way to search the results and put them in order – which is what SEO does.
Don’t be swayed by the blog posts out there – you can still use Search Engine Optimization to get your website to the top, drive more traffic to your page and improve your business. And we’d be happy to help!