SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, which is the methodology of enhancing the band and the quality of traffic to your site through organic or natural search engine results. Many SEO Companies, web designers, entrepreneurs, bloggers doing best blogging, and marketing peeps make use of SEO to increase the visibility of their site or products.
However, looking at the current global and national economic scenario one may wonder whether SEO is still worth investing money? Is investing capital in driving organic traffic a feasible strategy in 2020? Has SEO become obsolete? Organizations performing SEO often have to face these questions every year 24/7.
It is interesting to note that these questions have become crucial since the past decade, thanks to all the modifications in Google algorithms and tweaks in the Google search results (SERP). Also, as things have changed there are corresponding changes in SEO, too.
It’s no more surprising that the old SEO techniques providing the best results simply have ceased to work. It is more important to work on Technical SEO rather than just working on links. It would be noteworthy that some renowned and well-established organizations with big budgets such as J.C. Penney and Ehow.com have crumbled organic traffic.
SEO has indeed transformed significantly and now required much more strategies to be implemented. Even so, is it worth investing money in SEO in 2020?
To be true and factual, the answer is a solid YES!!
Let us see how SEO has transformed over the years and how to take advantage of it now!!
Importance Of SEO
As said earlier, by following the best SEO Ideas, SEO helps in driving the free/organic traffic to the site by improving its rank in Google search results. A high rank simply means that your site is easily visible to the people when they search for keywords related to any product or service.
It brings us to the next big question.
Why ‘Organic Traffic’ matters so much..?
It has been revealed by Bright and Edge, that organic traffic is the driving force for about half (51%) of all the people bouncing to the sites. This is far superior as compared to all other means such as paid (14%) and social traffic (5%).
Organic traffic is also beneficial in several other ways:
- People ‘google’ the products/services they desire: Most people would consider searching for info about the products/services that they need before making a purchase. About 81% of consumers perform online research before making any purchase.
- Organic traffic is all about user intent: Supposedly a user searches for a ‘car repair shop Mumbai’, it means that he/she wants to get their car fixed. It works the same way for product-related searches, too.
- Cost-Effective: SEO investment is beneficial in the long run. Once your site gets high-ranked, dethroning is not possible for a significant amount of time (provided that the site is maintained properly).
- Enhanced Sales: High ranked sites enjoy more potential customers.
- Crucial for local businesses: More than a quarter (30%) of mobile searches are linked to location, and about 75% of the users performing a local search go to a local store within 5kms. Good local SEO highlights your business in SERP and brings with it more potential customers to your stores.
- Google’s Jurisdiction: Google is trusted by most when it comes to a search engine. It is the reason why #1 ranked sites on Google search results see around 21% of visits. This means that a high ranked site experiences exponential organic traffic.
Now it must be clear why organic traffic and SEO are crucial more than ever!! Also investing in SEO is not bad at all!!
Even so, why do we ponder on whether ‘SEO is dead’..??
To get to the root of this let’s understand what has changed.
- Changed Google Rankings
Some time ago, it wasn’t too hard to even think about ranking on Google, it wasn’t advanced, and there wasn’t a lot of rivalries either. Indeed, Google had the option to comprehend the substance on your site, yet it wasn’t extremely keen. We as a ‘SEO Expert in India’ had the option to control the data on their sites to be supported by Google’s algorithm. Consequently, the craft of SEO was conceived.
Quick forward today, Google has developed and considers significantly more motions toward figure out which site has the right to be rank #1. Besides, two significant changes happened as of late:
- Google algorithm refreshes and,
- Patch up of Google’s search results pages
- Google algorithm refreshes
Coming up next is a rundown of significant updates that changed the SEO game totally:
- Panda (2011) – Don’t be tricked by its cuddly name. This panda is savage! It aims to punish sites with low-quality substances by preventing them from showing up in Google’s leading search results. With numerous sites having just felt the fierceness of Panda it’s anything but difficult to perceive any reason why much stress over the eventual fate of SEO.
- Penguin (2012) – Another adorable creature, planned with the sole reason to threaten sites showing nasty conduct, (for example, purchasing connects to support site authority).
- Hummingbird (2013) – The name originates from being “exact and quick” and is intended to all the more likely spotlight on the importance behind the words. On account of this update, Google would now be able to comprehend complex expressions dependent on the setting. Hummingbird update additionally implies that Google would now be able to comprehend equivalent words just as user expectations far superior to it ever could.
- Pigeon (2014) – This creature is perhaps more benevolent. The Pigeon algorithm should give more helpful, important, and exact nearby search results.
- Mobile-first update (2015) – In 2015 Google discharged a significant update, intended to give a lift to mobile-friendly sites. With this update, Google is leading unrest in the advanced world. It speaks to a change in outlook from the work area to mobile-first.
- RankBrain (2015) – Machines are dominating! Perhaps the greatest upset in web indexes, RankBrain is an AI algorithm that assists Google with handling and comprehends search questions. To put it plainly, RankBrain changes the algorithm all alone. Contingent upon the watchword, RankBrain will increment or abatement the significance of backlinks, content newness, content length, area authority, and other positioning elements.
- BERT (2019) – Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) is a neural system based procedure for natural language processing (NLP) preparation. This new model as of late turned out by Google is utilized to all the more likely to comprehend regular language by handling words according to every other word in a sentence. BERT update assists Google with thinking about the full set of a word and improve understanding the plan behind a pursuit, similar to people who can see one another. Other than the update’s capacity to assist clients with more helpful query items, it makes another test for individuals in the SEO business since you can’t generally improve for BERT, at any dislike previously. To outfit the intensity of BERT you have to compose a remarkable substance that coordinates clients’ inquiry purposes.
In any case, don’t be threatened by the entirety of this. Google is continually developing itself, with between 500-600 updates and changes each year! This doesn’t imply that you’ll be more terrible off. The majority of these are minor changes to improve strength, unwavering quality, and client experience.
Significant updates can be ‘distinct advantages,’ and genuine SEO specialists continually watch out for any progressions that may upset the business.
- Patch up of Google’s search results pages
It used to be that on Google’s SERP you could just observe natural rankings, with the main rivalry being an infrequent Google AdWords advertisement, that might show up over your page.
Presently, the principal page of Google has a great deal more going on. A portion of these new highlights shows up contingent upon your inquiry question. The new list items page is intended to react to the client’s pursuit inquiry a lot quicker, with more valuable data and sources.
We consider this to be an open door for more SEO!
Here is a portion of the key new Google SERP components and changes:
- Google Ads: At times, they can likewise show up on the base of the page. They don’t turn up for all inquiries, however, when they do, you’ll generally observe 3-4 advertisements on top and 3 at the base. In certain occurrences, Google extricates data from a very much upgraded page, to respond to a particular inquiry posed in the hunt question.
- Featured Snippets: Highlighted Snippets have higher CTR than customary natural outcomes. Some allude to this as positioning on ‘#0 position’ in Google. There are a couple of various kinds of Featured Snippets:
- Section type
- Rundown type
- Table sort
If you give clear clarifications, straightforward replies answers to questions, bit by bit aides or data introduced in plain structures, and do great SEO, you have an extraordinary possibility positioning #0, high above everything else.
- Image Packs: Pictures may show up for explicit pursuits when Google considers that visual substance would be important. These are appeared in a flat line or as a framework of pictures, which connect to a Google Images search. Picture packs present another important bit of land on SERP and an extraordinary positioning chance. Your substance can show up here if you lead Image SEO.
- Knowledge Cards: For inquiries that demand information data, Knowledge cards might be shown on the head of list items. Be that as it may, because they are typically founded on information concurrences with accomplices, generally, they are far off for most of the locales.
- Knowledge Panels: Information Graphs, otherwise known as Knowledge Panels remove information and data from solid sources, for example, WikiData and Google’s list. They show up on the upper right half of the indexed lists when clients look for basic information inquiries. Neighborhood organizations, marks, and even individuals can show up as Knowledge Panels too. This normally happens when clients scan for a brand name or a neighborhood business.
Wrap Up: Is SEO Worth The Investment..?
Search engine optimization isn’t dead, however, some old SEO methods are! You have to follow the best SEO techniques to get the best results. Google’s algorithm refreshes are just expected to dispose of low-quality substance, which has no spot on the #1 page of SERP, in the first place. Truly, the upgrade on Google’s search results page implies that your organic rankings need to seek clicks with more components. And yet, they additionally get new open doors for top-notch substance, picture, and video SEO.
Google is more astute and more complex at this point. It has shown signs of improvement at recognizing top-notch content from inadequately advanced, spam. Nasty SEO rehearses that used to command before will not work anymore. For instance:
- Nasty backlinks to your site.
- Replicating content from another source
- Watchword stuffing
- Slow and untrustworthy locales
- Locales not streamlined for cell phones
- Misleading content features
- Furthermore, different misbehaviors that get punished by Google.
With such a significant number of updates and changes in Google’s calculations, some more seasoned SEO strategies that used to overwhelm and push sites to top rankings, don’t work any longer. The algorithm refreshes have numerous self-announced ” SEO specialists” scrambling. Nasty practices that used to be their meat and potatoes are not, at this point legitimate.
Not exclusively are they not going to assist you with positioning high in list items, but on the other hand, they’re bound to get you punished and decrease your odds of positioning significantly further.
In this way, while replying “is SEO justified, despite all the trouble,” I have to call attention to that it’s as yet worth each penny. Be that as it may, you have to realize how to do SEO accurately if you need to receive all the rewards without getting sliced by Google Panda.
Natural despite everything commands all traffic sources and it does not indicate giving up. At the point when individuals need your items or administrations, they’re going to scan for significant watchwords in Google (or ask their voice collaborators).
New advancements give much more chances to likely clients to find your business. To expand your odds of showing up at the head of Google query items you have to play out the privilege SEO methods portrayed in this article. Putting resources into SEO will get you long haul, solid traffic, prompting more deals, and steadfast clients. Furthermore, that makes it such an incredible venture.
