Those who work on the web will often hear two questions: What is SEO and why is SEO important? Search engine optimization, or SEO, is a growing industry in today’s web content creation and marketing. SEO content writers and analysts help businesses get noticed easily by aiding them in appearing higher in search results. With the countless number of online businesses and websites that spring up each day, it can be difficult for entrepreneurs and start-ups to set themselves apart. SEO helps those business owners achieve their goals by finding ways to send customers directly to them, and it also helps those customers get what they need when they need it.
Why is SEO important? Think of it this way: Before you read this article, you most likely opened up your browser and completed a search on Google, Bing, Yahoo, or another preferred search engine. Through SEO, this article and others like it appear higher up in search results for particular terms. If you asked “Why is SEO important?” then chances are that this article and many like it appeared for you.
Even if you didn’t search for this article, you’ve conducted searches plenty of times before. Say you need a pizza delivery place within five miles of where you live. Just type “pizza” plus the name of your town or city into a search engine, and voilà! You should see at least a few results for pizza delivery in your area. As consumers, SEO is what helps us find what we need when we need it as soon as possible. As long as you know what to search for, especially for goods and services or to answer a simple question, SEO is what moves your answer to the top of the search results rather than forcing you to sift through pages and pages of information. (Who has time for that, after all?)
For businesses, on the other hand, the importance of SEO shifts from asking the questions to answering them. Whether you sell goods and services or provide information on the web, the reason you want a good SEO team is, ultimately, to make money and boost your online reputation. In this economy, a business owner can’t settle for mediocrity because that’s exactly what you’ll get if you’re not on page 1 of a Google search. The best part about outsourcing your SEO needs if you own a business is that you can focus on running that business rather than having to work hard to promote yourself, too. Going back to the pizza delivery example, if you own a pizzeria, you don’t want to worry about search engine results. Letting someone else handle that aspect of your marketing lets you do what you do best (which in this case, for you, is hopefully pizza!).
So back to that question “Why is SEO important?”: because it gets results! It’s a natural way to promote your business and is much more cost-effective than a slick ad campaign. Advertising can be out of reach for start-ups, and the solutions SEO offers are custom-fitted for large and small businesses alike. It’s a better value, and if you’re number one on Google, it’s certainly the best way to get ahead of your competition.