14 Reasons Why Every Business Should Invest in SEO in 2021

SEO – the abbreviation of search engine optimization – is the art and science of optimizing a website so it ranks higher on organic listings of search engines like Google, Yahoo or Bing.

On Google, the results appearing below paid ads are called organic listings, and pages earn these sought-after spots as a result of good SEO.

What Are the Different Types of SEO?

Before we start exploring why SEO is important for your business, let’s look at the various types of SEO so that you can get a better understanding of the subject.

White-hat SEO: This type of SEO is 100 percent ethical and done by following Google’s guidelines.

Black-hat SEO: Also called negative SEO, this involves SEO activities that are undertaken to manipulate search engine bots and increase a website’s ranking. Such SEO activities are against the guidelines of SEO.

Grey-hat SEO: This consists of a mix of white- and black-hat SEO.

On-page SEO: On-page SEO refers to SEO activities done on a website itself to better optimize it and improve the website’s ranking on search engine results pages (SERPs).

Off-page SEO: Off-page SEO refers to increasing the visibility and credibility of websites on the internet so that search engine bots can crawl the site better. These actions, such as social media marketing, guest blogging and link building, are taken outside of your website.

14 Important Benefits of SEO in 2021

Now that you have got an overview of what SEO is and the different types of SEO, let’s delve into the 14 reasons why every business should leverage SEO in 2021.

1. It’s Free

One crucial benefit of SEO is that it is free of cost. Companies on average spend 5-12 percent of their revenue on marketing and advertising. Smaller companies tend to spend more compared to big brands. However, if you want to get good exposure and brand awareness without spending a penny, then SEO should be your go-to choice.

Over time, good SEO can result in organic listings on top of SERPs at no cost. Of course, it takes time, hard work and effort to create valuable content that gets ranked on Google. But, trust me – that hard work and effort would surely pay off in the long term.

2. SEO Increases Your Google Ranking

Did you know 5.6 billion searches happen every day on Google and 3.6 million searches every minute? Altogether, Google receives 2 trillion searches every year. That’s a lot of searches and tons of SEO opportunities for online businesses.

The vast number of online searches on Google clearly indicates that online businesses can’t miss out on the opportunity of driving quality traffic on their website through organic SEO. Also, searches on Google are likely to increase in the coming years due to the continued rise in internet and mobile phone users.

3. More Businesses Are Investing in SEO

“SEO is dying” – at least, this is what some people say. However, this is not the case, and 70 percent of marketers still feel that SEO brings better results compared to paid advertising.

Perhaps this is why 61 percent of marketers say that improving SEO is their top priority. This clearly indicates that businesses are still leveraging SEO for marketing, advertising and other purposes. So, if you want to survive in the game of online business, there is no other option but to implement SEO and put yourself in the position to compete with the best of them.

At this point, ignoring SEO would be like leaving cash on the table.

4. SEO Is Evergreen

The other important factor of SEO is that it is evergreen. Once you rank your content on Google, it will give you long-term results. This is because once you are able to secure a high ranking on Google, it becomes very difficult for your competitors to outrank you. Everyone knows that SEO takes time. And once your content gets on top of Google, it will credit you with these rankings for months or even years in some cases.

5) It’s Easy To Learn and Implement

SEO is not rocket since. It is a skill that can be learned and mastered by everyone and anyone. Of course, people with a technical background do have an edge, but that does not mean non-techies can’t learn SEO.

I personally learned about SEO by starting a blog, and it was a wonderful experience. Blogging not only helped me in learning SEO but also about digital marketing in general. Later on, I opted to build a career in SEO, as my interest was more inclined towards it.

During my entire blogging journey, I realized one thing: SEO takes time and is not easy but it is also not impossible to learn and implement. If you are passionate about it and willing to learn, then no one can stop you from ranking your site on Google.

6. SEO Increases Your Trust and Authority

Yes, SEO will also help you in building your trust and credibility in the online world. You already know that SEO takes time. It is a combination of multiple activities, including content marketing, link building, guest blogging, social media marketing and more.

Once you do all these activities on a consistent basis, you’ll build your brand and increase your visibility online.

After building your trust and credibility via SEO, people will directly come to your website for consuming content and information related to your business.

7. Organic Traffic Is the Best Source of Traffic

Another reason why SEO is important is that it brings organic traffic, a source of traffic that is highly targeted. When a visitor comes to your site through an organic source with specific intent (and if you can offer them the right content)that visitor is likely to get converted into a customer.

That’s the reason why SEO is important for businesses in 2021. It not only increases your conversion rate but also trust, credibility and brand awareness.  Once you satisfy a particular query of a user by providing the right content, the user is more likely to visit your site again and again.

8. SEO Is Measurable

Yes, SEO is measurable, just like any other digital marketing strategy. There are tons of SEO tools available online that can help you in measuring your SEO efforts.

With those tools, you can audit your website, track your performance, fix up the technical glitches, track your keywords and do a lot more. SEO tools will also help you in planning and executing your SEO campaign with the best possible result. Of course, tools cloud cost you a handsome amount of money, but that investment would be worth every single penny you spend.

9. SEO Results in Better Conversions

The leads generated via SEO have a much higher conversion rate compared to other online marketing strategies. For example, SEO leads have a 14.6 percent conversion rate, while outbound leads have a conversion rate of only 1.7 percent. This clearly means that if you target your keywords wisely and get your content ranked on Google, then you’ll see a spike in your conversions.

More conversions will give more sales, profits and increase the revenue of your business.

10. It’s a Cost-effective Option

When you compare SEO with any other online marketing channel, SEO will always prove to be cheaper than others.

Google’s organic listings are based on ranking factors and algorithms which have nothing to do with Google ads or any paid advertisement. Organic results appear on Google due to good SEO, content and, of course, high-quality backlinks. This entire process takes time but it does not cost you a penny unless you decide to outsource your SEO task or an agency or company. Even so, the money spent on working with an SEO company pays off in the long run.

Also, pay-per-click (PPC) ads, which appear on top of organic listings, involve a cost every time a user clicks and visits a page. This simply means that SEO will give you results at a much cheaper rate compared to other forms of online marketing.

11. It Provides Great Insights

SEO can provide great insights about your customers or website visitors, like which language they use while searching online, from which country or place they visit, which device they are using, at what time they are most active and so on. You can use tools like Google Analytics to know the audience behavior, interest, demographics and more.

And all this is possible only because of SEO.

12. It Is the Largest Source of Traffic

Google is the number one search engine in the world, with more than a billion searches every day. Moreover, the number 1 result on organic listings gets 33 percent of clicks and receives 75 percent of traffic.

Hence, it’s clear that SEO can be the largest source of traffic for you, provided that you leverage it wisely.

13. SEO Improves Brand Visibility

Better rankings on search engines like Google will attract more eyeballs, thus increasing brand awareness and visibility of websites that are getting good rankings.

Hence, a good SEO strategy will help you in creating online buzz about your brand for free.

14. Competitor Research

Yes, with the help of SEO tools, you can also track and measure your competitors’ SEO strategies, keywords which they are targeting, backlinks, domain analysis and so much more. This will help you with identifying the strength and weaknesses of your competitors. Nowadays, companies and brands are extensively using paid SEO tools that give them an extended arm while doing SEO. Apart from competitor research, SEO tools can also help you with content marketing, on-page SEO, technical SEO and site auditing.

FAQs About SEO

What Is SEO?

SEO or search engine optimization is the process of increasing the ranking of a web page on Google in order to get the maximum organic traffic. SEO is a non-paid form of search engine marketing.

What Are the Different Types of SEO?

Black-hat, white-hat, grey-hat, on-page, off-page, on-site and technical SEO are the different types of SEO.

What Is On-page and Off-page SEO?

On-page SEO refers to optimization activities done on the website or web page. Off-page refers to optimization activities done on the internet in order to increase the visibility of a website in the eyes of search engines.