Seo Isn't Dead, Despite What You Might Have Heard

Full service marketing, advertising and digital agency The Works have recently added search engine optimisation (SEO), PPC and social media management to their digital service portfolio. Here, they discuss why they believe SEO isn't dead despite what some people say, and the impact good optimisation can have on your business.

SEO is the technique of ensuring your website and the pages on your site are accessible to a search engine. If done right, it means that when someone searches for a given term on the likes of Google or Bing, they will see you and your website in the results, if any pages on your site are relevant to what they’ve searched for.

Good SEO is one of the best marketing tactics a company looking to increase their online visibility can use as it ensures your site or page is one of the first results a person will see- nobody has time to scroll through pages of results when trying to find something, so it could be the difference between someone ultimately choosing you or your competitor.

Nevertheless, how many times in the past year have you heard or read something that said, ‘SEO is dead?’ A quick Google search will bring up thousands of results spreading the myth that SEO is irrelevant. Ironic, isn’t it? The people who started that myth to get more people to click through to their ‘fake news’ articles have proven that SEO is anything but dead. Yes, SEO and the way the process is carried out is now different (there’s no more keyword full hidden text on websites or paid-for backlinks which can lead to penalties), but the outcomes remain the same- the higher you are in the search results, the more visibility you have, therefore, the more chance you have of increasing your web traffic.

Good SEO is a very technical process, but is something every website should be doing as standard. Google are constantly working to improve their algorithm to ensure the results you see on their engines daily are as relevant as they can be, but SEO is about more than just keyword rankings, although undoubtedly, they’re an important part. To ensure you climb through the rankings, you must also ensure your website is kept up-to-date with timely, high-quality content. There isn’t necessarily a best practice guide as to what type of content will help get you to the top of the rankings, but long-form content and responsive websites seem to be two of the things favoured by Google- so much so that, unsurprisingly, the company have announced plans for a mobile first index to be rolled out before the end of the year.

There’s not one approach to SEO that will work for every website, it’s like everything, each website must be looked at individually and a strategy put in place linking to the bigger marketing picture. The biggest frustration we see in clients when it comes to SEO is how it long it takes to see results, whether that’s an increase in day-to-day web traffic or improved keyword positions. But, SEO, when done right is something which will pay off in months and years, rather than days and weeks.

With over 3.5 billion searches performed every day, and search demand continuing to grow across nearly every industry as buyers of all types increasingly rely on it to find products, services and answers, SEO is something which can produce a better return on investment than almost every other digital channel you’re using.