5 Reasons to engage in SEO NOW!

As I was writing the last piece entitled ‘My Girlfriend and Google’, I realized that I had much more to say on the topic and promised a follow-up article. Being a man of my word, I now present to you my afterthoughts.

A large portion of my role at Directing Design, Inc. includes educating business owners in technology changes and shifts in marketing trends. This includes all aspects of website design, branding, and online marketing, however the most common topic clients want to discuss is SEO or ‘Search Engine Optimization,’ so I will continue my focus on that topic for the time being. Very often, business owners and/or managers have the wrong SEO mindset. The general train of thought is that showing up on page one of a Google search equates to more business, but this is not necessarily the case. Page one results in Google for phrases that pertain to what you sell or do is what is powerful.

It is important to understand the mechanics of SEO, but its equally important to understand the application of this concept, as this is what will make the financial investment worthwhile. It is imperative for you to understand the buyers’ minds and climb on board with the huge shift in marketing technologies. Now is the time to catch up with the rest of the modern world so that you can fully engage your audience and sell your products and/or services effectively. Businesses struggle with how to do this, and many are still investing in dying media for fear of change. It’s the “I’ve done this for 20 years, so I’ll keep doing it” mentality. They are trying to abide by the old adage “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”, but the thing is… it IS broke. The time for change has passed and ignoring that is hurting sales.

There is good news, though. If I were to search 10 businesses at random in the Oklahoma City area I would get a mixed bag of results when looking at the company website and online marketing efforts. At a minimum, 60% would have outdated technology and NO online marketing strategy. I could then do a second search and take one of the bad results and compare it to local competitors. Depending on the industry I may find one or two companies that are investing in their online presence and engagement. What does this mean for your company? If you are already investing in your online presence, there is always room for improvement. If you are not, don’t worry, as most other businesses in your local market are not doing a good job. You could outshine them by investing now. Why is this important? Well, for many, many reasons, but we’ll take the top five for the time being:

1. Oklahoma doesn’t have a hugely competitive arena yet. You can get a head start. Beat your competitors before they are even entering the race.
2. Buyers are using the Internet to find products and services on their phones, tablets and computers. They are eliminating those companies with terrible websites, no websites, websites that are unviewable on mobile devices, or bad listing data in their buying process.
3. People love to shop online, in their own time with NO sales pressure.
4. Online marketing, and particularly SEO, are not aggressive forms of sales. The buyers that find your website because of a particular phrase they type into Google ARE looking for what you provide.
5. Other traditional forms of advertising are being avoided. We can sync our own playlists to our cars and avoid radio commercials. We can stream movies online, rent from Red Box, DVR, and record shows, to avoid the ads. Print sales are down and rarely does anyone read the ads, anyway.

Quite simply, if we want something we ‘Google’ it!