It’s hard to imagine a time before SEO, but there was one (find more information here). In the past, the internet was so bare that you could set up a website and immediately find yourself ranking high for local and even national searches. But with more than 50 billion internet pages now in existence, getting your particular page in front of people can be difficult.
Some businesses today use SEO services to help them rank higher, but many refuse to go down that route because of the industry’s reputation. Go back ten years ago, and most SEO was done by simply spamming keywords and making irrelevant backlinks. But today, it’s an entirely different story. SEO is all about providing quality content to users and helping businesses convert.
SEO Cleaned Up Its Act
Many companies think that getting involved in SEO will somehow harm their reputation. They believe that they can still rank well organically and don’t need outside assistance. But is that really true anymore? While there are certainly still many disreputable players out there intent on using blackhat techniques to help companies rise (and inevitably fall) in the rankings, they are a rarity. Today there are dozens of agencies, like The HOTH, which only use techniques permitted by the search engines. SEO is less about trying desperately to climb the ranks by any means necessary and more about optimizing your approach to search, based on the current algorithms.
You Don’t Have To Learn Any More Than The Basics
Like all technical disciplines, SEO seems like a pretty impenetrable subject from the outside. And, historically, that has put a lot of business owners off. They don’t want to waste time learning about all the technical details of running an SEO campaign or optimizing their meta tags.
The good news is that all of that can now be done by third-party companies. There’s no longer any need for individual entrepreneurs and business leaders to sit down and do the job themselves if they don’t want to. Most SEO tasks can be completed faster and more efficiently by trained professionals who do it every day. Not only do they have the experience necessary to perform quick optimizations, but they also stay abreast of the latest developments in the SEO scene so that you don’t have to.
It’s No Longer Expensive
Many companies think that buying SEO services is costly. But it turns out that, thanks to competition, it’s surprisingly cheap. Competition among agencies is fierce.
Small businesses, however, might not want to spend money. However, when it comes to SEO, this is one of those cases where you really do have to spend money to make money. There’s just no way of getting around that fact. SEO is often a lot cheaper, however than PPC advertising.
Traditional Advertising No Longer Competes
Finally, it’s worth noting that this year, the advertising industry reached a watershed. ROIs for traditional marketing methods like TV adverts and billboards decreased, while digital advertising increased. Although traditional advertising might seem like an easy option, it no longer competes with online marketing.