Pros And Cons Of SEO

How does search engine optimization improve website traffic? In this article, we'll go over the pros and cons of SEO. Should you pay an agency to carry out a campaign, or should you find other methods of getting traffic to your website? Is search engine optimization even still relevant in 2022? We'll cover these questions and more in this article.

What Are The Pros And Cons Of SEO?

The pros and cons of SEO are critical to be aware of if you're thinking of investing in different marketing methods for your website. SEO is not by any means perfect, and for certain situations, it makes more sense to spend your marketing budget on Google ads instead of search engine optimization. However, there are situations where it makes a lot more sense to invest in SEO. So how do you know which form of marketing makes the most sense for your situation?

Below, we'll go into both the benefits and disadvantages of SEO to help you determine whether it makes sense for your situation.

What Are Disadvantages Of SEO?

SEO Is Slow

Search engine optimization may not be for you if you want to get as much traffic as quickly as possible. Like weight loss, a search campaign is a journey, not a sprint. It could take anywhere from 3-9 months to start getting significant organic traffic to your website if you were to invest in a custom campaign.

SEO Is Competitive

SEO requires constant monitoring due to the competitive nature of search engines to be the most effective. While you can keep your rankings for years without doing much to maintain them, particularly competitive keywords will require constant work to ensure you receive the most traffic possible.

SEO Is Expensive

For many companies, it isn't easy to afford to spend $500 - $10,000 a month on a search engine optimization campaign. Especially during the early part of the campaign ( the first 3-9 months ). It can feel costly, as it feels like you're not seeing much of an ROI. However, once your website starts ranking for the keywords, it will be more than worth the investment, especially compared to Google ads.

What Are The Main Benefits Of SEO?

The Traffic SEO Gives You Is Yours To Keep

If you were to invest in a Google ads campaign for a year, your traffic would come to a screeching halt in the month you end your campaign. However, if you were to invest in an SEO campaign for a year and then decide to end your campaign, something interesting happens. You keep your traffic. Huh? Yeah, you read that correctly.

See, after investing in a campaign for a year, your website will be organically ranking for hundreds or even thousands of keywords. As a direct result of those rankings, your website will bring in hundreds or thousands of organic visitors each month. Search engine optimization doesn't just give you traffic. It is the act of improving your website to such an extent that Google rewards you with rankings and traffic. Those improvements are yours to keep long after your campaign ends. You can continue ranking for valuable keywords for months or years after your SEO campaign ends.

SEO Increases Your Credibility

What many people do while browsing for things online - without even realizing it - is judge the credibility of each result we see when we search for something. You will generally trust the first result Google gives instead of the one found at the bottom of page 8 of Google. Your customers feel the same way, so when you start showing up on the top of the search results, you will be seen as more credible if you aren't already.

SEO Is More Affordable Than Google Ads

Search engine optimization campaigns can vary significantly in price. Generally, the lowest a campaign will be is $500 a month, and they can get as high as $100,000 a month. However, the typical campaign will be around $2500. After about a year, it wouldn't be too hard to get 1-2 thousand organic visitors every month to a website. 1-2 thousand can easily be achieved with a budget of $1500-$2500. However, if you were to get that same amount of traffic with Google ads, you'd easily be spending 2-8 times that amount.

Take the photo above, for example. If you look at the section inside the red box, you'll see that the traffic cost of the 1200 organic visitors they are getting each month would cost $4.3k - each month - if you were to buy it using Google ads. You can easily see 1200 organic visitors in an SEO campaign after 12-18 months at half that monthly cost. Not only that, but as we said earlier in the article, you would keep seeing traffic like that long after you end your campaign, whereas you are trapped into paying Google ads if you want to keep your traffic.

Why Do We Need SEO In 2022?

In 2022 and for the foreseeable future, SEO is not going anywhere. If you own a business in an industry that is even remotely competitive, you can guarantee that your competitors are or have invested in search engine optimization. Google the service or product you provide. Those businesses you see on the first page of Google have invested in SEO. Unless you're Amazon, Coca-Cola, Forbes, or some other widely-known household name, you don't wind up on the first page without SEO. Many profitable keywords for a business are highly-competitive. So generally, the companies ranking on the first page for those keywords are spending money on an SEO campaign.

So whether or not you need a campaign in 2022 depends on your goals. If you want to get more inbound leads in the form of calls, quotes, appointments, etc., then getting your campaign down is one of the best investments you can make for your business. If you would instead stick to another form of client acquisition, while search engine optimization would be an excellent additional stream of potential clientele, it may not be a great fit for the model you are trying to build.

If you look at the photo above, inside the red box, you'll see two figures. The top figure shows the number of people typing the keyword each month into Google. Two thousand four hundred people are typing "chiropractor grand rapids" each month to find a chiropractor in grand rapids. Below this figure, you'll see how difficult it will be to rank for this keyword.

This figure represents the level of competition for this particular keyword. While the representation of difficulty isn't wholly accurate, it gives you a rough idea of how much content and effort will go into ranking for this keyword. The higher your domain authority - the trust Google has for your website - the easier it becomes to rank for keywords like this. However, because this is one of the main terms chiropractors in Grand Rapids will want to go for, there is a lot of money.

How SEO Improves Website Traffic?

To understand how SEO improves website traffic, you must understand what an SEO campaign's goal is. The goal of any campaign is to not only enhance the authority of a website but also to get a website ranked for as many relevant keywords as possible. Getting a website to rank for many different keywords will ensure that the website gets in front of people at various stages of the buying process. 

Increasing the number of organic visitors to a website is a given with an SEO campaign. It isn't just about getting traffic to the website. Instead, the focus of a campaign is to drive more potential customers to a website. You can quickly analyze and research the intent of users typing in specific keywords and determine which keywords are asked by potential customers and which aren't. Using the data uncovered in this research will determine the direction you take with your content and which keywords you target.

What Are The Challenges Of SEO?

The primary challenges faced in any search engine optimization campaign can be anything from securing quality backlinks, navigating algorithm updates, competing websites & SEO agencies, and even shifting market trends. While there are common challenges in every SEO campaign, the truth is that it isn't all that challenging. SEO is more time-consuming than challenging. 

There are always ways to ensure your website receives quality traffic. Even if a competitor has been investing heavily in digital marketing for decades, so many other verticals can be targeted with a campaign that you can always find ways to bring in traffic. I would say that the primary challenge will be with other SEOs stealing traffic, but even this is not the end of the world. You can always negate this by creating quality content, and an excellent backlink profile, etc.

What Is An SEO Content Strategy?

A "content strategy" in SEO refers to the focused effort of creating content geared towards making a website an authority on a specific topic. Content strategies require quality keyword research, competitive analysis, and a content calendar that you do not stray from. Google cares more that you are posting content regularly than just posting dozens of articles all at once. So find a frequency that works for you, and post accordingly, consistently.

Is Content Marketing Part Of SEO?

Absolutely! It isn't enough to create quality content. You also need to promote that content. Google thinks that if you - the content owner - don't even value the content enough to promote it, then it must not be great content. So it would help if you showed Google that you care about the content by promoting it everywhere you can. This will tell Google that you care about the content, and in return, Google will care about it too.

Conclusion

So with all of that said, hopefully this article helped answer any questions you had. If you want to know more about search engine optimization, check out our blog page. We have articles that cover more topics like this, such as an article that shows you how often you should invest in SEO, and even an article showing how duplicate listings can damage SEO. If you want to take your SEO into your own hands, we even have an article showing you the 11 things you want to avoid in SEO when optimizing your website.