It’s a long, hot, sticky, summer night in Miami Beach. You’re walking down Ocean Drive, sweating bullets, looking at all the beautiful people and all you can think about is an ice-cold margarita in your hands.
Right on que, you look up and see a bar called “The Watering Hole”. It’s smack dab in the middle of the main drag, with a neon sign reading “Ice Cold Margarita’s”. Of course, you stop and have one…or two… then go on with your evening, never thinking twice about the choice you just made.
Location, Location, Location! Why SEO is Important
“The Watering Hole” has been thriving off customers just like you for decades, while dozens of other bars, not located on the main strip, have come and gone like the hurricanes each year. Having that location provided an incredibly valuable advantage. During high traffic hours The Watering Hole got maximum storefront exposure. A clear and visible sign only enhanced this value and practically sat the sun-soaked patrons at the bar all by itself.
This advantage that “The Watering Hole” holds over the other bars in Miami Beach is alike to the advantages SEO provides companies online. The Importance of SEO and investing in prime search engine real estate has never been greater. If invested in properly, organic optimization can be the most powerful digital marketing tool an organization can utilize.
Don’t Wait to Buy Search Engine Real Estate, Buy it and Wait!
“But I’m in the ABC industry, targeting XYZ clients, why is SEO important to me? Regardless, if you are selling a product, a service, B2B, B2C, wholesale, niche, non-profit, or even if your company is based around selling phone books from 1992…. SEO IS IMPORTANT!
Buyers and decision makers are using the internet at an exponential pace and all of them correlate high search engine rankings with industry leadership. There is someone on the internet right now searching for your services or product, and they are finding your competitor.
According to recent studies in Forbes Magazine, somewhere between 80-90% of consumers now check for information online prior to making a purchase. This number is only predicted to increase. The time is near when practically everyone will be searching for information on products and services online before spending, investing, or donating money. Without organic SEO your website will be lost on result pages 2,3,4,5 and beyond, just like the bars two blocks over in Miami Beach.
SEO Real Estate & Your Competition
Your competitors know the importance of SEO and the search engine algorithms are getting better and better, year by year, which is why SEO is a never-ending process. Search Engines are infatuated with providing people with the best user experience possible. That means connecting searchers with the most relevant content, in the richest environment, at the fastest speed possible.
According to statistics from Search Engine Journal 93% of all online experiences begin with a search engine and 60% of those clicks are allocated to the top three spots on organic results. Additionally, 75% of searchers never make it past the first page of results. Imagine that! That’s better real estate than Times Square on New Years Eve, and it isn’t going anywhere.
That’s why your competition is investing so heavily in SEO to evict you and anyone else from those high traffic locations. Now are you starting to see the importance of SEO in 2018, and why it is an investment with such a high ROI?
SEO, Most Important Factors
In short, the answer to this is CONTENT, CONTENT, CONTENT. More specifically “Quality Content”. Almost every recent change we have seen to Google’s algorithm focuses itself around the quality of content that Google is connecting its searchers with. The days of counting total back-links are long gone. The best indicator of the quality of your site are the authoritative back-links pointing to you. Search Engines want to see these quality back-links from industry leaders, in essence giving you a referral or “thumbs-up” on the web.
The importance of On-Site SEO can be tied back to “Quality Content” as well. Search engines spiders need to be able to crawl your website to effectively consume the content and rank your site. This means page speed is a HUGE deal. If your site loads slowly users get impatient and bounce to another search result. According to Kissmetrics, 40% of people leave a website that takes over 3 seconds to load and 47% of users expect a webpage to load in 2 seconds or less. Search Engines HATE slow speeds.
Additionally, search engine spiders hate duplicate content, and content that cant be accessed via mobile device. According to Google over 50% of all searches are originating from a mobile device. In fact Google has gone as far as to say their algorithms will primarily use the mobile version of a sites content to rank the pages from that site!
When is The Right Time to Invest in SEO
Hopefully, since you have made it this far into the article, you can answer this for yourself. The right time to start investing in SEO is NOW. SEO is a complex puzzle involving not only your directed initiatives but the initiatives of other companies competing for your Keyword Real Estate.
Would you give a head start to someone your racing? No! Which is why understanding the importance of SEO is your first step out of the blocks. In today’s digital landscape highly competitive locations on the web give you and your company an advantage in the marketplace.
What other investment will organically provide you with industry ethos, higher conversion rates, enhanced brand recognition, and a command of your market share. Search engine real estate is as important as “The Watering Hole” having their prime location on Ocean Drive. Don’t let your potential clients walk into your competitor’s website because they didn’t see or couldn’t find yours.