Is it worth investing in SEO over the long term? That question, as well as minor variations, has been asked constantly in recent years as businesses evaluate the outcomes versus the time and money invested. As a leading web design agency, we can relate to this viewpoint since optimizing for SEO may sometimes be tough to quantify without expert analytical evaluation.

We’ll be taking a look at several case studies, including some of our own data to see if it’s worth investing in SEO or not. To answer this question, we’ll have to consider several factors that caused the outcome in an attempt to draw conclusions about how well SEO works for different businesses.

The Difficulty of the Competition

One of the first factors to consider when evaluating whether or not SEO is worth investing in for long-term success is how difficult it will be to compete. If there are already several competitors who rank well for your targeted keywords, then chances are that you’ll have a lot of work ahead of you.

Every industry has some degree of competition, but even then it can vary. For example, you might have a much harder time ranking for the keywords “best web design agency” if your competition already ranks well on Google’s first page of search results.

If your targeted keywords are very competitive compared to most other industries, you may need more than SEO strategies alone to be successful in reaching the top. You may need to draw in more potential customers with social media or other marketing initiatives that can be integrated into your strategy.

The Volume of Keywords

Since the process of optimizing for keywords is called “search engine optimization,” it should be fairly obvious that you want to optimize as much as possible for the highest number of relevant keywords as possible. Competitive keywords take a lot of time and dedication to rank for, so doing it for just a few won’t have much impact on your website’s growth or earnings potential.

Creating great content that gets shared is the fastest way to get more organic traffic that can influence the rankings of any page you’d like. So placing yourself in front of potential customers when they’re looking for your products or services is the quickest way to grow sales. The only question you need ask yourself when deciding whether or not it’s worth investing in SEO is “how many keywords should I be optimizing?”

The Competition is the Goal

If your primary goal is to beat everyone else in the race for top search engine rankings, then you’ll likely need to invest some serious time into SEO. If that’s not your goal though, then you might be better off focusing on other digital marketing strategies than on trying to eliminate the competition through search engine optimization.

It may seem like a daunting task to try and outrank all of your competitors in Google so you can have the most sales, but it may not even be worth that much time or effort if your goal isn’t to just rank on Google’s first page. For example, you could instead focus on gaining customers through social media marketing and using email marketing to make more sales.

The Process of SEO

Understanding how SEO works can help you determine whether or not it’s worth investing in for your business. The process is fairly simple, but at the same time it can be very complex if you decide to go for an extremely competitive keyword that sees little traffic.

Typically speaking, SEO focuses on getting more visitors to your website by putting you ahead of the competition with high rankings on Google. To accomplish this, you’ll have to perform several important tasks.

The process of optimizing your website revolves around increasing the number of visitors through natural searches on Google. The following are some tips for making sure your website gets found by search engines when people are searching for relevant keywords.

Choosing the Right Keywords

The first step to optimizing your website for search engines is choosing the right keywords. If you’re not targeting the correct terms, then all of your efforts will be wasted since you won’t have clients coming to your website or generating sales.

When choosing the keywords that you’d like to target with SEO, you’ll need to find “long tail keywords” that are specific and describe your business more accurately. You can do this by using free tools like Google Keyword Planner or through paid ones like AHREFS.

The Optimization Process

Once you’ve chosen some high-volume keywords that aren’t too competitive, you’re ready to start optimizing for them. The main thing you’ll need to do is ensure that your website design has a good structure for SEO purposes.

To make it easier for search engines to find your pages, you’ll need to create titles and meta descriptions for all of them. You can also add in keywords throughout your copy via H2 or H3 headers, alt tags, and text boxes. You can also use Schema markup to make your Google My Business page stand out from the rest.

The latter can be complicated and it’s best to work with a SEO professional who understands how to use it. The most important thing you’ll need to do is ensure that your website is crawlable, which means that you have a sitemap available and all links are working properly.

Building Links

The next thing you can do is build links to your website for more traffic. The more links coming from other sites, the more search engines will trust you and send visitors to your site.

There are several ways that you can go about building links to your website for SEO purposes. One of the most common strategies is guest blogging on other blogs in your industry with a link back to your website in the author bio box.

SEO is a Long-Term Process

The final thing you should know about SEO is that it’s a long-term process. It can take weeks, months, and even years to see results if your keywords aren’t very competitive or there isn’t much traffic available. And while it’s possible to get quick wins by doing things like link building and publishing articles on other websites, the best results will come from following a long-term strategy.

If you’re looking for SEO services or website design services, we are a full-service digital agency that can design, develop, and market your business online through all major channels like organic SEO, social media marketing, PPC campaigns, web design & development services.

Why Is SEO worth the Long-Term Investment?