If SEO is supposedly dead, why is it still so important?

27Sep
2015

The arguments around SEO be in debt have been around for ages and we have written about this ourselves previously. So, is SEO a lame-duck and are we wasting our money and time at the expense of other initiatives?
This is not the case at all. Optimising your website is even more important than ever, however, how you go about SEO has changed. It is this change and the relevance of SEO to different businesses that I wish to raise with you in this article.

The New SEO Challenges

The fact of the matter is; your ability to gain prominence in search engines rankings has become more difficult. This due to the search engines are being smarter, more demanding and that results space available is more competitive. Credibility, reputation and authority have become the linchpin of what search engines are looking for.
Your website must be seen as being relevant to your audience. This can be best achieved with clear content that is directly related to your key products and services. Such content is focused on what is written within your site. The other important aspects of credibility and reputation stemmed from what others say about you and your business.
The immediate response of many is that this involves backlinks. In part, this is correct, however it is the form in which these off-site factors take it is important. No longer is it about the quantity of back links you have. Now it is about the quality – what is being said and where it is being said about your business and website.
The challenge all of this presents this mean market is:

It is difficult for many businesses to actually find content that is interesting and unique.
The ability to have your content noticed is more challenging in a space that is already being saturated with other such content.
Maintaining a steady flow of new content across all media channels is demanding on both time and money.
It is no longer sufficient to simply publish content without clear outcome based strategy that is backed by empirical results.

Much is simply our website was sufficient in the very early days the Internet, simply having content is also not enough anymore.
SEO now requires a more strategic approach closely coupled with a digital marketing strategy. This all needs to be hinged around content marketing. Your digital marketing needs to be more finely tuned and it should be more targeted at the real audience. This leads us to the final aspect which we see as being more prominent, your ability to develop a connection with your market.
Building a relationship with your market is now a fine and somewhat scientific process. It is one of leading your market to a desired outcome by way of different pathways.
Along the way you offer different incentives. These will assist you in identifying their area of interest and their level of commitment. By way of a series of sales funnels and gateways, you will be able to more clearly identify real prospects and sales conversion opportunities.
There are a wide range of tools now being displayed in areas of marketing automation. Some examples include lead pages, lead capture and content promotion. These are just a sample of proven techniques for capturing visitors and converting them to sales leads.
These tools rely on deep analysis of results to help you understand the nature and patterns of visitor traffic. This information is then used to fine tune your different strategies.
No, SEO is not dead. In fact is quite the contrary. The core essentials of SEO have not radically varied. It is those activities you do in the area of promoting your online business that makes the difference.

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If SEO is supposedly dead, why is it still so important?