5 Reasons Your Business Needs To Focus On More Than SEO

• Updated on: 2017-12-03
• Read original article here

Since the birth of online media and marketing,SEOhas been one of the most used phrases when discussing setting up a website and driving traffic toward it. Search Engine Optimisation is the phrase given to describe activity that attempts to improve search engine rankings. This can affectyour online visibilityas a company, and as we move more and more onto online digital platforms, it’s something that’s been focused on hugely. Everyone wants to be seen online and every company wants to be found, which is totally natural for a business. To be successful, you need to be online and to be successful online people need to be able to find you and use your services. It’s a no brainer that you should want to have the best rankings out there. The thing is, SEO was never the biggest game changer when it came to the digital revolution. Of course, it’s always been important, but to focus exclusively on a strategy that is built around SEO is often a mistake.

When a company focuses on just SEO, they are making a mistake. There needs to be more to the marketing strategy that you build for your company than focusing on being up the rankings and it takes more than an SEO strategy to get you there, anyway. Readinga history of all major Google updatescan explain to you why SEO has changed over the years and how it has impacted companies around the globe. While SEO IS important, it’s not the be all and end all of marketing strategies, and we’ve put together five reasons why SEO isn’t what your business should concentrate all of its efforts on.

Your Company Is Not Important To Google

Google isall about the user. Google cares more about the user experience than it does about your brand and what you want to do with your company. It’s not that it doesn’t want you to rise up the natural search ranks, it’s just that customers come first, and their search needs are greater than your need to be found. Google cares more about its usefulness to the end user, which is why when a customer looks for a certain topic – let’s say cars – they don’t want to see separate car brands and Google anticipates what it is they want to look for before collating the results. Google – and other search engines – don’t sift through and find the relevant companies with those results. Google is a business, and that’s why many companiespay to be at the topof the listings.

When it comes to designing the perfect strategy, content really matters to Google. Thehigher your content quality, the higher you will appear in the search ranks. A good SEO strategy is one thing, but top content that is SEO-optimised is going to matter more. You can’t hope to rank very well in the Google results list if your content is limp and isn’t packed with the right keywords. Companies are under a false impression that they don’t need to spend money on good content creation, as long as they’ve built links and spent their cash on marketing that content. Content that is of good quality will hang around for longer in the web, gaining traction in Google algorithms over time. Marketing campaigns are something your company often does just the once and when you stop spending your cash on them, the results stop churning. Content should always be a first priority for your company.

Many companies out there try and loophole the system when it comes to SEO, placing backlinks and keywords where they shouldn’t be in the hopes of garnering more clicks and more traffic. The thing is, Google doesn’t miss a trick and if you aren’t playing ball, they will blacklist your site. Google is advancing just as much as every other company that lives in the digital world, which means they are getting far better at catching those shortcuts companies love to take. Google closes loopholes faster than theblack hattersout there open them up, so it’s best to play by the rules where you can so you don’t get into trouble!

There are so many other places you could be spending your budget other than SEO, and those places can often give you better rates of return on your investment. Keeping people on your website for longer by making your website easier to search internally is one way to go, and this means laying down more cash on theweb development sideof things. If you’re clever about analysing your traffic and searches, you can pick up where search queries are being made. If you have noticed that customers are searching for the same thing over and over again, you can make moves to create a button on your website that answers those queries easily. This way, you’re spending more of your precious cash on customers you already have and making their user experience better, rather than spending it trying to get more customers to use a website that isn’t as well rounded.

There’s More Than Google

Google is the biggest web engine out there, but there are also other places you should be hoping to rank highly. When customers want specific products from specific websites, they’ll head there instead. Etsy, Amazon and eBay are a few of these such sites, and you should consider trying to rank well on these websites as well as Google.

Ultimately, the importance of SEO is lessening over time when it’s considered as something standalone. You need to have more to natural search rankings. Just because people can find you, doesn’t mean your site is of high quality. By focusing on content being high and getting the right following on social media networks – of which there are loads – you are going to rank highly anyway! So, rather than drop cash just on an SEO strategy, make it work better all-around for your company and your customers.