#creativ digital

Is SEO a waste of time?

The short answer:

Sometimes it is and sometimes it isn’t.

Digital strategists, content marketing specialists and SEO experts will tell you how vital SEO is to your business. According to statistics, 81% of businesses consider their blogs an important asset. Compared to outbound leads like print advertising or direct mail that have a 1.7% close rate, SEO leads offer a higher close rate at 14.6%.

And with over 100 billion searches on Google per month and 75% of the users never scrolling past the first page of Google results, it makes perfect sense to jump on the SEO marketing bandwagon as fast as you can.

If your competition is doing it, so should you, right?

Not always. For SEO to work to its full potential, you need to do it right.

What is SEO?

SEO stands for search engine optimization. Put simply, SEO is the process of increasing your website or web page’s visibility on search engines, particularly Google.

The main goal is to increase the quality and quantity of web traffic to your website through organic and unpaid results.

If consumers search for a certain keyword, for example, and your website is optimized for such a keyword, your website will get a higher ranking on the search results page. This means more frequent site visitors with potential to be converted into customers.

By definition, SEO seems like an excellent idea. But there are more complexities that goes into an SEO strategy. Most businesses invest in a costly SEO package that sometimes go to complete waste because they’re doing it wrong.

Which is why it’s very important to know when SEO is a complete waste of time and when it is completely beneficial for your business.

When is SEO a waste of time?

There are several instances when SEO is a waste of time. Let’s look at some of these situations.

First, SEO is a waste of time and resources if your goals don’t align with what SEO can achieve. For example, you’re trying to sell Coca Cola, which customers can buy directly in stores. Promoting the product online can help with branding but won’t necessarily lead directly to a sale. Point of sale advertising, in this case, is the better approach.

Another common situation is where the website you’re trying to promote has a bad and unresponsive design. We often see websites that do not promote the main product or service. What’s the point of SEO if you’re not going to focus on selling your product or service in the first place?

There are also some websites that do not work well for users. Slow load time, lack of informative information, poor layout and lack of organization are some of the common reasons that result in bad and unsatisfied user experience. Even if you have the perfect product or service to offer, you’re likely to lose a potential customer because your website is not user-friendly. In this case, it’s best to improve your website first.

Poor overall marketing strategy is another sign that SEO, when used, will be a complete waste of time. First of all, you need to make sure your product or service is needed in the market. Second, you must offer customers a competitive price and positioning. Only then you’ll be able to position your product or service in the market that can compete with other brands.

Before you can take advantage of an SEO, it’s best to rework your marketing strategy first. A good marketing strategy should successfully generate brand awareness and lead generation targeting the right customers. With brand marketing, the goal is always to focus on the desired audience you are try to sell your product or service to.

If you don’t have a well thought out digital marketing strategy, your SEO campaign no matter how elaborate or expensive just wouldn’t work. There has to be a comprehensive analysis in place including competitive positioning, proper keyword selection and content marketing to make it all work.

Finally:

SEO is a waste of time if you’re using the wrong SEO Company. There are plenty of companies online offering expensive SEO campaign packages. Unfortunately, most of them are all talk and rarely live up to their promises. Make sure to work with an SEO company with a solid reputation to make your investment count.

When isn’t SEO a waste of time?

Now that you know when SEO is a waste of time, let’s discuss when it isn’t a waste of time.

Obviously, if you’ve taken care of the issues we’ve mentioned above then you’re ready for a solid SEO campaign. To ensure that you don’t waste your time with SEO, there are some important things you have to establish.

First of all, you need to make sure you have a sellable product or service. No amount of SEO will help unless your target customers want to buy what you’re offering. Make sure your product or service has a competitive advantage. How do you do that? By finding out what your customers need and want then creating a product to meet those needs with a competitive proposition.

Second, you need a good overall marketing plan. Who is your target market? How do you plan to reach your target market? How much marketing budget do you have? What’s your long term marketing goals? These are some of the important to ask when crafting a good marketing plan.

And finally:

It’s time to make your website better if necessary. That means improving on overall design, loading speed, layout and presentation to improve customer experience.

Once everything is in place, keyword research is the next step. You can’t just optimize your website for any keyword. Keywords need to be carefully researched, analysed and selected for SEO to work. What you’ll want are keywords with high commercial intent, which is defined as the likelihood that someone will buy something.

With the right keywords, it’ll will be easier to carry out an SEO campaign that’s focused on converting visitors to buying customers. And that’s exactly when SEO isn’t a waste of time.

The Bottom Line