Why You Should Still Love SEO in 2020

Search engine optimization is not a new concept. In fact, SEO has been a critical digital marketing tactic for over two decades, since the introduction of the first search engines (Yahoo and AltaVista) and greater consumer access to the internet. These days, you should know too well that you need to participate in SEO practices to make your web content more visible and find digital marketing success.

Yet, even though SEO isn’t a cutting-edge digital marketing strategy, it should be one of your favorites. Here are some big reasons you should still be in love with SEO in 2020, after all these years.

SEO Boasts Notable Results

Imagine this: An ecommerce website selling alcohol and soft drinks only gains site visitors through PPC advertising; it doesn’t rank at all in Google’s search results for industry keywords. PPC is great, but it can also be expensive, so SEO tends to be advantageous. An SEO firm audited the website and found all sorts of issues that knocked them off Google, to include a bevy of broken internal links, duplicate content, non-indexed pages and more. By fixing these issues and adding content with keywords, the site ranked in the top 10 of search results for more than 400 keyword phrases and brand names, and it successfully cut PPC costs.

It isn’t difficult to find SEO stories that slung startups and small businesses into significance and success — stories that see an unknown or struggling SMB regain a market hold thanks to increased visibility in the SERPs. It’s true that the right SEO strategy is always beneficial for a business; the key is identifying what strategy is best. There are a few caveats — most notably that SEO is not an exact science. Two different companies that gain the same number of backlinks might see different results on the SERPs. It is imperative that you partner with the best possible SEO services providers to ensure that your SEO strategy will net you a positive outcome.

SEO Is Easy to Outsource

Speaking of the best possible SEO services, SEO isn’t something you want to do in house. SEO is both technical and time-consuming; it requires weeks if not months to master SEO basics, and managing your SEO campaign could easily take over your daily schedule. Ultimately, you will have to hire at least one full-time, experienced employee to manage your SEO campaign — but a well-trained SEO expert at the beginning of their career commands an annual wage of at least $60,000, and for a more experienced, established pro, you are looking at well over six figures in salary alone. In-house SEO is not the right answer.

Because in-house SEO is so untenable, SEO is one of the best business services to outsource. When you outsource your SEO, you are ensuring that you have access to a team of well-trained and dedicated SEO professionals. However, before you hire just any SEO agency in your area, you should be aware that not all SEO companies are equal. Some SEO providers perform black-hat SEO, which might increase your ranking in the short-term but get you in trouble with Google after a while. Some questions you should ask an SEO firm before hiring them include:

• What are SEO services that you offer? They should be able to offer you a menu of valuable SEO services and explain which services are best for you. You should run away from any agencies that participate in keyword stuffing, cloaking and content milling. 
• How do you communicate with clients? SEO is as complex as digital marketing; in fact, if you can find a digital marketing firm that does SEO, even better. Even so, you should be in constant contact with your SEO team.

SEO Evolves and Changes

Last but not least, one of the most important reasons you should still be in love with SEO is its complexity. Business leaders like you often relish overcoming obstacles and finding success, and SEO presents a noteworthy challenge with definite benefits. Even more thrilling, rules and trends for SEO are constantly changing as Google and other search engines update their algorithms, so understanding and practicing SEO requires consistent education and alteration. 

Even if you do outsource your SEO to an agency, you will gain by remaining plugged into the SEO community. Though the concept of SEO might not be new, the execution of SEO changes every month, and you need to have some grasp of what your SEO team is doing to reach your online marketing goals. The more you know about SEO, the more you will care — and the more you care about your SEO strategy and practices, the sweeter your success will be.