It is important SEO today?

[paulserban]

Today, when the focus is on content, there is one more important SEO?

[Matt Koshko]

There's no question that SEO is important but how much attention & time you should spend on SEO is certainly arguable. The ever growing mass of content has become a commodity - we are no longer in an information age.

 

Depending on the content format or medium, SEO may not apply. Any public facing web page should include the basics of SEO - meta tags, image tags, keyword saturation, search engine friendly URLs, and heading tags.

[Guest MarketingYouControl]

Huh? SEO is NOT important - at least not how most people are trying to "game" it.

 

They get it all upside down.

You do not get traffic by optimizing SEO. It is a wet dream never coming true that you could

use "organic" listings in Google & others in order to attract "free" traffic (which is never free because
all SEO efforts cost time and money).

And SEO is not scaleable at all - it is a gambling and guessing game:

Meaning: you do not know how much more traffic you will gain because you rank higher in the 

search engine. Will it double your traffic? What kind of traffic will it bring?

Here is something that a lot of people overlook:
People that click on PAID Google ads (just an example, or Yahoo, or... whatever paid ads you want)
are a different crowd then people that click on organic search engine results.

And here is what is even more important:
PAID traffic can be scaled, it means you test to get 100 clicks and see 2 sales from it, so you pay
more and increase the spending limit on the same ad and will get 1000 clicks and see 20 sales from 

it.

That is simply not possible from SEO at all - it is a guessing game, and ... you can be delisted anytime
because any search engine changes their algorithm all of a sudden.

 

The real "secret" is to build websites for REAL people that have a real need and write articles

that are read by real human beings and not some SEO-Optimize garbage that nobody wants to
read and holds zero value for real visitors.

So here are the steps:

1. Build a site based on a real need and write valuable content for that customers/person that has that need.

2. BUY traffic that targets exactly that customer/person

3. If you provide value and meet the needs of your customer/person they will automatically spend time on your
site, recomend it, share it on social media and you well get the all desired SEO over time automatically!

[Matt Koshko]

You are correct in saying that SEO is not scaleable - you have no control over the outcome. However, can you gain traffic through organic traffic by having keyword placement and saturation within your pages? Absolutely.

 

Like you are saying, it's impossible to say 'Let's target XYZ [keyword] to get 1,000 hits a day through organic search'. You and I have no control over how many people will search for the keyword tomorrow, the next day, or any other day. And, we don't know how search engines will rank a specific page for that keyword tomorrow.

[simkesrb]

Lots of SEO practitioners in our world today see SEO as a task. They see it as work. They see it as a bunch of quotas that they need to accomplish. And if you don’t love what you’re doing, you’re most probably one of those guys. Well I say SEO is an art.

 

 

The big picture

 

When you look at it on a bigger scale, you can’t do SEO without a strategy and plan. That strategy and plan can only be made when you really understand the business and it’s customers. The only way you can understand the business and customers is to interact directly with them and try to get a feel of it yourself.

 

It is tasking, yes and it is also a lot of work. But trying to formulate that specific strategy for a specific company can only be a form of art – there is no map to do it and you are not bound by any specific laws. It is without shape. Your SEO strategy will have to be shaped and traced by you – you’re the artist.

[GomerMagtibay]

SEO will work in favor of you only if you work with Google's allies, like Google Plus and Youtube. If you're busy on promoting your site on Facebook and other "closed door social media sites", you will not be prioritized by Google, except they will notice you're receiving so much traffic coming from your social connections. 

[rpsmith]

I have long begun to question the importance of SEO. It seems like an impossible task as google seems to keep changing the rules. What works today is negated tomorrow. I have learned that there are other means of getting traffic besides the ever changing google.

[Guest Paul Nulty]

Depending on your objective and marketing strategy, If your focus is with offline advertising to drive traffic to your site then why would SEO be important?

[ansgar]

SEO is VERY important.... Because google is the biggest traffic source on the net. And not only the biggest. It is the source of the highest quality traffic. That is because BUYERS go to google and search for what they want to buy. They dont surf random pagese hoping to come across an adword ad about the product they are interested in. You will never get anywhere near the conversions of organic traffic with paid traffic sources.

 

And it is just as scalable as paid traffic.

 

You scale SEO by adding more content that targets more related long-tail and LSI keywords...

Almost 60% of my search traffic comes from long tail keywords I didnt even think about until I

saw that these terms have been used by my visitors. By optimizing a site for these keywords

You can boost your ranking for them and get even more visitors via these keywords...

 

And it is possible to know how much traffic You will be getting. It is pretty well documented how many percent of the users that search click on certain positions in the search. And google itself will tell You how many searches a keyword gets per month. So You can determine how much traffic You will be getting for reaching a certain position in the search results. SEO is not a shot in the dark!

 

If You dont do blackhat SEO then getting penalized or delisted by algorithm updates is VERY unlikely... That only happens when You dont follow the rules...

 

And the biggest advantage: It is free. Yes You have to spend some time and money on tools. But You need to do the same keyword research for paid traffic... Or are You blindly guessing what would be a good adword keyword. So paid traffic also takes time and money in addition to the actual PPC cost.

 

A top listing in google will bring You about 28% of the searches as visitors.... When You target keywords that have 10.000 monthly searches You will get about 2800 visitors.... Just imagine how much 2800 clicks for the same keyword would cost....

So You can run many sites profitable with a SEO strategy that are not profitable when You have to buy the traffic...

[Garrett Hutsko]

Just because you advertise in Google does not Guarantee you will sell anything and you will have to shell out money to do it.   The best sales are from are effort. Promote, build a list, promote, build a list, sell. Google will pick you up in it searches as you have generic traffic visit your site, and you site could be ugly as sin and still work.

[Rafael d Jesus Ferreras Castillo]

Very true Garret!!

 

Just because you advertise in Google does not Guarantee you will sell anything and you will have to shell out money to do it.   The best sales are from are effort. Promote, build a list, promote, build a list, sell. Google will pick you up in it searches as you have generic traffic visit your site, and you site could be ugly as sin and still work.

[oldbuddy]

Just because you advertise in Google does not Guarantee you will sell anything and you will have to shell out money to do it.   The best sales are from are effort. Promote, build a list, promote, build a list, sell. Google will pick you up in it searches as you have generic traffic visit your site, and you site could be ugly as sin and still work.

 

Garrett you hit the nail on the head. In my limited experience SEO serves to keep people like me paying Wealthy Affiliate $45 a month to teach me stuff I never did master. Now that I quit, I have a couple of pages at the top of Google just from doing what comes naturally and promoting with my own free methods. I get to keep all my earnings too.

[Kevin J Timothy]

When at least 5 of the top 25 websites in the world

are search engine based, you bet your bottom

dollar that SEO is still important.  Remember...

 

Some form of SEO is involved with even videos and eBay/Amazon listings.

 

Take a look for yourself.

 

Alexa's Top 500 Global Sites

 

Think outside the box and go beyond the idea

of the traditional Yahoo, Google, and About.com

searches.  Even local SEO is vital for local

brick and mortar business in your towns.

 

Never, EVER forget that the average person

relies on the internet for finding information

that is indexed in some form.

 

Keywords, meta tags, titles, etc. are involved

with even a simple eBay auction.  And yes,

even those will be indexed in a typical engine.

[Rafael d Jesus Ferreras Castillo]

SEO is important if you want to build a authority in the internet, because google have the #1 position of most visited website, so if you want your client search for you website, you need to have a website with SEO.

[Garrett Hutsko]

Yes SEO is important but you do not need to focus on it. If you focus on promoting you site using Safe Lists, Traffic Exchanges, and other promotion processes your site will get indexed and seen naturally without any special effort, and if done correctly the cost is very low compared to SEO Services.

[Garrett Hutsko]

If you need to check your SEO I found a link where you can get 30 days of free SEO processing, just go to SEO Optimizer Pro and get started. This may answer the above discussions.

[iamherbertflores]

Yes very important. If you have the skills how to rank your website through content or using videos you can generate a lot of leads!

[Corrisa]

SEO is important only if you wish your web pages to show up in Google's organic search. Some people (companies) do and there are many that do not.

 

For the latter they rely on paid methods because it's faster and more scalable. Organic (SEO) traffic is not reliable (if you've been through all the Google algo changes, then you know as much).

 

So, the answer to your question can best be answered by the person/company the question is directed to. Like I stated earlier there are people making lots of money without help from any search engine.

 

I personally think to solely rely on SEO to build your business is foolhardy considering what's happened in the past few years. A better approach would be SEO, Social media, and paid methods or solely paid methods once you've got a funnel/or high converting website.

[Garrett Hutsko]

SEO is nice but there is a better way by using Safelists and Traffic Exchanges which for the most part are free. When you use these you get seen by those on the net without having to pay for the SEO process. People see your site, landing pages, and promotions and respond to them, as they do the SEO process takes place and you start to rise in the Search engines towards page one. This is a natural way to get promoted with spend large amounts of money. SEO is nice but why spend the money if there is a better way to do it.

[Guest Paul Nulty]

SEO is nice but there is a better way by using Safelists and Traffic Exchanges which for the most part are free. When you use these you get seen by those on the net without having to pay for the SEO process. People see your site, landing pages, and promotions and respond to them, as they do the SEO process takes place and you start to rise in the Search engines towards page one. This is a natural way to get promoted with spend large amounts of money. SEO is nice but why spend the money if there is a better way to do it.

I agree, it's all dependent on your advertising style, Being part of the big search engines is a good advantage, I would agree mostly safelists and Traffic Exchanges are free, however we look at any kind of advertising it never really is free, We trade our time to place or view ads anywhere on the net, SEO can be free in terms of money but the real cost should be measured and considered with both time & money and that's why it's good to diversify with multiple advertising styles and SEO too, I do like to diversify and invest with both time and money.

[Garrett Hutsko]

The interesting thing here is that I got a phone call from someone who thought that they ccould boost my SEO standings just by spending money with them. They worked hard and tried to convince me that I needed their help in an area where I have been for some time now. I spend money on the net for various things and have my accounts in various places where my SEO standings are good, they could not understand that and tried to convince me that I would fail with out them. As I learn more about SEO I am learning that my efforts in the generic and simple ways are doing more than spending money with someone like this.

[craigbeddow]

SEO is VERY important.... Because google is the biggest traffic source on the net. And not only the biggest. It is the source of the highest quality traffic. That is because BUYERS go to google and search for what they want to buy. They dont surf random pagese hoping to come across an adword ad about the product they are interested in. You will never get anywhere near the conversions of organic traffic with paid traffic sources.

 

And it is just as scalable as paid traffic.

 

You scale SEO by adding more content that targets more related long-tail and LSI keywords...

Almost 60% of my search traffic comes from long tail keywords I didnt even think about until I

saw that these terms have been used by my visitors. By optimizing a site for these keywords

You can boost your ranking for them and get even more visitors via these keywords...

 

And it is possible to know how much traffic You will be getting. It is pretty well documented how many percent of the users that search click on certain positions in the search. And google itself will tell You how many searches a keyword gets per month. So You can determine how much traffic You will be getting for reaching a certain position in the search results. SEO is not a shot in the dark!

 

If You dont do blackhat SEO then getting penalized or delisted by algorithm updates is VERY unlikely... That only happens when You dont follow the rules...

 

And the biggest advantage: It is free. Yes You have to spend some time and money on tools. But You need to do the same keyword research for paid traffic... Or are You blindly guessing what would be a good adword keyword. So paid traffic also takes time and money in addition to the actual PPC cost.

 

A top listing in google will bring You about 28% of the searches as visitors.... When You target keywords that have 10.000 monthly searches You will get about 2800 visitors.... Just imagine how much 2800 clicks for the same keyword would cost....

So You can run many sites profitable with a SEO strategy that are not profitable when You have to buy the traffic...

I kinda agree. Most people will find what is being sold while doing something else. I just use tags that are common, appropriate to my content and it's leads.

[craigbeddow]

The interesting thing here is that I got a phone call from someone who thought that they ccould boost my SEO standings just by spending money with them. They worked hard and tried to convince me that I needed their help in an area where I have been for some time now. I spend money on the net for various things and have my accounts in various places where my SEO standings are good, they could not understand that and tried to convince me that I would fail with out them. As I learn more about SEO I am learning that my efforts in the generic and simple ways are doing more than spending money with someone like t

Is it not true that if someone clicks on your link, it moves higher on search pages anyway? Possibly start at the top or near and then if people click as it is falling, it may move to the top again.

[affilliate3percent]

SEO is vital to today's websites despite it's focus change because Google Rankings on popular and long tail search terms are scalable and generate tons of not just traffic but long term traffic and such laser targeted traffic that conversions are far higher than buying hits or surfing exchanges and playing with mailers and safelist. Sorry it's the truth no matter how much you wish to declare SEO dead and a waste of time.

 

Today's SEO has next to nothing to do with meta tags which are used by smaller meta search engines and more about Semantic Markup to adjust your listing and it's relevance to your desired search terms.

 

Keyword density is also a low factor as Google and Bing now read whole text and penalize an overly loaded site pushing too hard to sell a keyword. Natural content designed for humans will have car, auto, and automobile used in the content instead of just car,car,car. The first example will outrank the second one in Google listings every time.

 

Links have always been vital but now the focus on natural links is greater than ever before. Links need to vary in text, they need to be from related content pages, and they need to be visible enough to be sending you organic traffic. No more paid links on any site that will have you. No more posting to a blog on potato salad when you are selling Yogurt Parfait and thinking it will do anything but get you a slaped on penalty from Google, Bing, and Yahoo.

 

Image and Video Page Semantic Markup are also getting vital. These specialized searches are done by people doing hard research into products and companies and wanting to see and hear more. By being found on the first page of a video search for your product you could see 5 times the conversion from that traffic as you do from your #1 listing on regular search.

 

I mentioned before the traffic factor. Bulk traffic is dangerous when you don't run small A/B split test on vendors to see who is sending real people and who is showing your webpages to bots or autosurf pages. Traffic needs to have a low bounce score under 30% regardless of volume. Many SEO think if you send a ton of traffic to a page the results are better but the fact is small sites with low traffic are killing them on page ranks because the visitors are staying longer on the site, visiting multiple pages, engaging with multimedia, and most important for you they are converting into leads and sales.

 

In the end that is what we are after and I would rather convert 20 sales out of 1,000 visitors than 20 sales from 10,000 visitors and enjoy ranking for, "best toilet bowl cleaner 2016" while my competition is looking for a affordable way to rank for, "Toilet Bowl Cleaner". I am positive I can scale up from there by linking more related content that has low hanging fruit keywords like maybe adding a page about "orange scented toilet bowl cleaner drop in" or Lemon self cleaning toilet tank block". It may take more pages but the traffic will be there and it will convert better because the customer already knows exactly what they want they are just searching for a brand or expert that shows them where to get it and who's the best.

[binchiu]

SEO is good your business but you must more money to got it.