SEO
March 17, 2023
This question has been in the mainstream ever since SEO arrived. People tried to rank on their primary keyword and when they didn’t they thought that optimizing for search engines has no sense as it isn’t working for them.
According to Hubspot, Google controls 92% of search data and there are approximately 2 trillion searches done every year. Which translates to around 5.6 billion searches per day.
SEO has been changing ever since it has been in the industry. With updates every year, and google bringing in new changes, the SEO game is getting more difficult for those thinking of getting visible on google in 2023 & beyond.
In the midst of every update, the question you may ask is: SEO is dead? Should you even invest in SEO and content strategy?
Let’s dig in to find answers to these questions and further investigate!!
People would often refuse to optimize for search engines as they have prior experience of working hard but didn’t getting the desired results.
This may happen due to various reasons: –
These are just a few problems that occurred when people tried to rank. In real life, there could be more such scenarios that ultimately translate to not ranking up higher on google.
Success in marketing requires a constant ability to adapt to new channels and trends.
What was effective in the past may not be as effective now, or may not work at all, for various channels such as email marketing, social media, search engine marketing, brand marketing, and of course search engine optimization.
It was easy to rank for head terms in the early 2000s than today. With over 13 major updates from 2010 to 2019 alone, google has evolved over the past years.
Today an SEO strategy needs much more than just identifying keywords and building backlinks.
Clearly, people claiming SEO to be dead are looking for shortcut methods to grow their brand or content.
Change can be intimidating, and many people, including myself, feel this way. The thought process is often, “if it’s not broken, why fix it?”
However, the previous method of SEO was flawed. By 2005, websites were taking advantage of unethical black-hat SEO tactics that disregarded the user experience and instead focused on tricking the search engine.
These tactics included excessive keyword usage, showing different content to users and search engines, purchasing links, and more.
In the early 2000s, these SEO tactics were effective & were the talk of every marketer. However, Google has since evolved and raised its standards, making these methods obsolete.
Today not only will these techniques will result in decreased organic traffic, but using them may also result in a Google penalty, which significantly may reduce the traffic until and unless the remedy has been done.
Google machine learning today focuses on prioritizing the user experience.
This includes providing accurate and helpful information, creating a smooth and efficient website, and having a well-organized site structure.
These white-hat tactics have replaced the unethical black-hat methods which were used earlier to manipulate the game and are now considered the top trends in SEO.
SEO needs constant work and patience. In contrast, the black-hat tactics I previously mentioned were relatively straightforward.
For example, a site could stuff numerous relevant keywords into a page and hide them behind the white text.
This would result in keyword stuffing and cloaking, which would lead to increased SEO traffic. However, these methods are now deemed unethical and will not produce long-term success.
Read More: Google Spam Update: Reasons Why Your Traffic Dropped
The landscape of SEO has changed altogether. Now, success requires the constant creation of valuable and engaging content that your target audience will enjoy reading.
Additionally, having a fast website with a loading time of fewer than three seconds is crucial.
To succeed in SEO, you must concentrate on both content and technical aspects such as crafting compelling title tags and meta descriptions, organizing your pages effectively, regularly updating your XML sitemaps, ensuring Google can display your content properly, and there is so much more to it in real life.
SEO has become increasingly complex since its inception, regardless of whether you started in content or technical SEO.
To gain organic visibility in content SEO, it is necessary to have a well-structured page design with clear headers, body text, links, images, videos, and transitions.
Those without a background in writing or access to dedicated content teams may find this challenging.
Technical SEO has become much more complex compared to its earlier days when XML sitemaps, robots.txt files, and HTML were the only main focus & you could still have gained authority.
Nowadays, SEO requires a deep understanding of teamwork, website structure, client-side rendering, JavaScript, dynamic rendering, pre-rendering, largest contentful paint, first input delay, and cumulative layout shift. These are all critical components of technical SEO that one should master
Regardless of whether you started with content or technical SEO, it’s likely that you’ve had to expand your knowledge and learn some new aspects of the web that may have seemed perplexing initially.
However, with education and practical experience, the most successful SEO practitioners are able to master these initially confusing strategies and effectively put them into practice.
What is the future of SEO in 2023?
Will it exist in 5 years’ time from now?
Is SEO Still Profitable?
These are some questions you may ask yourself before investing in SEO.
SEO is a long-term game and hence investing in it may take your head buzzing around as to whether you should apply SEO in your content marketing strategy or not.
However, there are companies and big ventures that still believe SEO is their go-to channel. There might be chances that your competitors are already into SEO and driving massive sales through it.
Love it or not, SEO is the ROI booster for your business if done right and strategically. The brand awareness that it can bring is massive. So, if you haven’t started doing it yet, 2023 is the right time.
