Do You Need SEO in 2015?

There’s been a lot of talk about search engine optimization (SEO), why it is necessary and how it has been helping businesses improve their online visibility. It is undoubtedly an important element when it comes to search engine rankings. But given the fact that search engine algorithms keep changing; does it still imply that you need SEO in 2015?

SEO Is Still Pretty Much “In”!

Yes! SEO is still regarded as an integral part of your overall marketing, strategy efforts if you’re going to have an online business succeed.

In generic and laymen terms great SEO enables you to promote your business in a way that ensures maximum exposure to the right audiences. It entails the use of the right semantic keywords, tags, web design and marketing integration to create a seamless organic online profile. The search engine (mainly Google) can now read these elements, (among another 200 updates) while designating the authenticity and rank of your company, thereby influencing the customers’ perceptions about your enterprise!

SEO – Expensive or Affordable

Well, for the most part, non cookie cutter SEO is an intricate discipline on its own, therefore, depending on what your needs are, an SEO campaign can be quite expensive. Whether you decide to hire an SEO expert for the task or use someone in-house, rest assured it will cost you a significant part of your resources when not done properly. However, over time, you can justify these costs against the growth in your business.

There are ways in which you can streamline the process, reduce your budget for SEO while improving the overall performance of your online business. As suggested by the biggest search engine pioneer “Google”, here are a few things you need to keep a lookout for in order to improve the outcome of your SEO efforts.

• Site content and structure. Merely attracting the customer’s attention is not enough. Your website should be designed in a way that communicates the purpose well, tells the visitor what s/he needs to do and what s/he will be able to gain from it. If the site structure or content is not user-friendly, you’ll experience high bounce rate, which reflects negatively on your SEO score.
• Technical aspects. This includes web hosting, web coding, Java scripting, error pages management, redirects and other similar issues. Your visitor should be able to navigate through your website with ease.
• Content Development. This is an era of rapid evolution. If you are not keeping up with the pace as far as content development is concerned, the search engine might mistake your website to be an obsolete or “dead” page, pushing it further down in the search engine ranks. Make sure you are producing and publishing fresh content regularly.
• Online Business Development Campaigns. Your presence in the online world needs to be coordinated and well-integrated. If your customers receive varied messages across the platform, it will lead to confusion and distrust.
• Keyword Research. Make sure you are using the right keywords that your customers are using to search for your services. There are quite a few online marketing tools (like Google Analytics and Keywords.io) that you can use to see how well your keywords are aligned with your customers’ searches.

The question to ask is do you need SEO in 2015? As a general rule of thumb, search engine optimization is best left to those who excel at it. But if you’d rather do part of it on your own, these tips will help you analyze your website for efficiency and effectiveness.