In 2017, you’ll find plenty of gurus and online personalities heralding the end of an era in terms of search engine marketing (i.e. SEO). They’ll cite the rise and increasing dominance of social networks, mobile apps and the overall decrease of search engine authority as the culprits. Search engines like Google, they say, simply can’t get you as far with online marketing as they used to.
While it’s certainly true that the World Wide Web is a bigger, more dynamic and increasingly diverse place than it used to be, it’s beyond a stretch to say that SEO is no longer relevant. In fact, given the intense competition for online customers in this diverse array, you could just as easily say that search marketing is more important now than ever.
In this post, we’re going to look at a few reasons we believe SEO in Australia is as important today as ever it was. But first, let’s have a quick refresher of what we’re referring to when we talk about search engine optimisation.
What Are SEO Services?
Search engine optimisation is, in a nutshell, everything we do to a website to make it rank well for searches. When we say that site has “good SEO”, what we really mean is that Internet users searching for products, services or information related to a website’s offerings will find the site listed prominently in the search engine results pages (SERPs).
Let’s say that a particular company specialises in selling auto parts. Ideally, they want to attract Internet searches by users who intend to buy auto parts in the near future. With that in mind, they’d be interested in ranking well for searches like these:
- ‘shop online for auto parts’
- ‘quality auto parts for sale’
- ‘buy an oil filter’
The company would expend less energy trying to pick up information searches such as ‘How does an alternator work?’, because these searchers are less likely to have an intent to buy. This all boils down to keyword targeting. Website operators try to anticipate the search phrases that users enter to find products like theirs, and they optimise their site to rank well for them.
Then there is local SEO, which is all about finding searchers in your geographic region. As any reputable SEO specialist will tell you, local SEO in Sydney and other cities is more important now than ever. Along those lines, any successful SEO strategy in 2017 will have a strong local component.
Intense Competition Makes SEO More Important Than Ever
We mentioned above the fact that there are more channels through which Internet users can find products now – from social media platforms to mobile apps. If anything, this makes it all the more important to pick up a competitive edge anywhere and everywhere you can. A search engine is certainly one of those places.
Just pause for a moment to consider how it is you find information on the Internet. If you’re anything like the average users, you may springboard your way to content via Facebook, Twitter or other social media platforms, but your most targeted searchers almost always begin with a search engine.
Whether you’re checking scores for a recent football match, checking opening times for a restaurant or trying to figure out who has the best Italian cuisine in town, you probably used a search engine to assist you.
Google processes tens of thousands of search queries every second. These are not idle queries of no importance. On the contrary, each one represents a person trying to find something – be it general information or very specific guidance.
By devoting a portion of your online marketing resources to SEO, you’re effectively helping to ensure that your site shows up in the SERPs when people are looking for something your organisation can help them with. Why waste this opportunity rather than embrace it?
Mobile Devices Have Made Local SEO Even More Important
We’ve already mentioned the role of local SEO in an online marketing campaign. In this age of mobile devices, more people are accessing the Internet through mobile devices than through desktop platforms. Not only that – they often use these devices to help them navigate a local marketplace.
On-board GPS devices and voice-enabled search mean a person can ask their phone – as an example – for the best Indian restaurants in their neighbourhood. Those voice requests are going to be processed through a search engine, and the results may be patched into a map application.
Make no mistake: the local Indian restaurant that has done its due diligence with local SEO is going to rank well for this query. It’s much more likely to appear in the results served to the user, and if it’s in the area, there’s a good chance they’re going to stop in soon for a curry.
There are so many ways that local search is changing the face of SEO – certainly more than we can list here. Suffice to say, a well-crafted local SEO strategy is going to give your business a strong competitive edge. Hire a reputable SEO company to help you with this, and your organisation stands to come out on top for local and voice searches again and again.
Content Is Still King
The adage ‘content is king’ is older than the age of online marketing, and it’s likely to persist into the next marketing age, whatever that may look like. From a practical perspective, this adage means that content – whether it’s written words, videos, images or audio – is what engages and motivates people. If you want them to interact with your brand, you need to serve them high-quality content.
Content is certainly the force that drives the Internet. It populates websites; people share it on social media; and marketing gurus use it to motivate people to a point of sale. There’s no question that content is still king.
If content is king, then SEO is still of the utmost importance. This is, after all, one of the most effective ways that we can get our content in front of other people’s eyes. Along those lines, it’s safe to say that SEO is as important in 2017 as it has ever been.
