Is Seo Necesary?, Do I Need to Perform SEO for My Website? Options

[kailyn_morgan]

Hi All,

I have come across many people asking as to whether SEO is really necessary for increasing the traffic of their website or not??

Well being from this field for quite some time now as per my understanding and knowledge on the same, I can say that the answer is not necessarily Yes. You might and might not agree with me but as per me if any of the following examples apply to you, then you may not be requiring an SEO campaign as of NOW:

1. If your website is very specific for certain group of audience and does not require too much of public intervention then yes u do not require SEO. e.g. sites of universities and organizations especially made for students and employees resp.

2. When ur site already ranking well in the search engines, due to brand name etc, and you're satisfied with the traffic n sales the u don't require SEO.

3. When you facing some business fallouts, then u need to concentrate ur resources n energy elsewhere rather than SEO.

4.If you are planning to revamp or redesign your whole site again then go for SEO only after you have restructured your site again.

For other cases yes, SEO is necessary for your website.


I am sure some might agree with me, whereas others might have some other explanation for the same. Awaiting for the response from all of u...


Thanks & Regards,
Kailyn Morgan

[EGOL]

I think that SEO opens new opportunities

1. Universities can recruit new students by ranking for terms such as "online nursing program"... and having a search presence in the cities within their service area

2. Nike might be assured of traffic when the word "nike" is searched for but being in the search engines for "running shoes" will pull new sales.

3. In this situation it's time to hire new staff

4. Yes, but do it soon as wasted time is lost money.

[joedolson]

I'm bothered a little bit by the use of the word "necessary." SEO is necessary if you want to increase the traffic to your website; if you want to improve your conversion rate; or if you generally want to improve the quality of your traffic. Essentially, SEO is necessary if you want your business to expand.

However, if you're currently in a position where you have as much business as you can handle, then you need to consider other priorities instead: whether you need to hire more employees, whether you need to hire an efficiency consultant to streamline your business process, or whether you need to enlarge your stock. If you can't handle the added business, then SEO is the wrong answer for you.

Even if a business has no website or a website which doesn't perform, if they can't keep up with their current workload they don't need SEO work. They need to fix their other business priorities first.

[Respree]

2. When ur site already ranking well in the search engines, due to brand name etc, and you're satisfied with the traffic n sales the u don't require SEO.

I agree. If you are making money faster than you can count it, SEO is not necessary. That said, I don't know of many business that find themselves in that position.

[eKstreme]

If you're making money fast you need to do two things:

1. Build a contingency plan for when the money stops gushing in. That will probably involve SEO. The question here is how stable your business/revenue is.

2. Expand very quickly to generate more money.

In short: you need SEO, if not now, tomorrow. Better get started.

Pierre

[bwelford]

Let me jump in with both feet and say a resounding yes to search engine optimization (SEO). The only exception is if you have created the perfect web page as an artistic endeavour and don't care whether anyone else ever sees it.

If not, your web page is presumably built because you want to tell people about your company or what you offer. Search engines look for relevant web pages for given keyword enquiries. Often the way they look at a web page is the way a human searcher would look at the web page. Making it easy for the search engine is making it easy for that human searcher.

If you already have enough sales, you should always be looking for more purchasers because it may not continue or the competition may suddenly heat up and leave you trailing in the dust. If you have too many sales, then increase your prices and perhaps offer a slightly better product. With fewer sales but the same or greater profit your business will be in a stronger position to grow in the future.

[JohnMu]

Should SEO be necessary if your website is standards-conform and crawlable?

[A.N.Onym]

Let's say if your site is crawlable, written with your customers in mind, you don't need that much of a SEO (strictly speaking). Content writing and marketing, maybe.

Other than that, I see no reason not to improve your website and marketing.

This post has been edited by A.N.Onym: Feb 5 2007, 11:20 AM

[JohnMu]

(sorry, I'm just being sneaky )

Of course the larger question is: what is SEO?

There are a few factors involved, it's a strange brew of more or less technical issues on your website and the marketing you do for your website address. Is there any other area of business that is similar at all?

On the one hand you want to promote your business for people (traffic), on the other hand you want to have the promotion found by software (link-value), then you have your "shop" which also has to be readable and understandable by software (on-page factors). Then we have things like "link-bait" where you use content to "trick" people into creating links (for people and software) to your site.

Oh and don't get me started on the name ... we're not optimizing search engines, I don't think you could even call it optimizing a website for search engines; you're also promoting it, you're marketing it in a way that search engines can recognize your efforts but not realize that you did it yourself (make it look like a user recommended your website).

Optimization also implys that there is an optimal state that can be achieved: but there isn't. You can only improve the current state -- and even then, the direction required for improvement can vary over time.

Pondering about the necessity of SEO somehow seems strange .

Is it necessary to make things better (very simplified)?

John

[folex]

Hi kailyn, my pennies worth:

1. If your website is very specific for certain group of audience and does not require too much of public intervention then yes u do not require SEO. e.g. sites of universities and organizations especially made for students and employees resp.

If you are making content specifically for current students or company business employees and NOT for public view, then this is an Intranet with login required. If the content will be visible to the public and search engines, and it is informative, you may aswell optimise the content, there are many reasons why you would do this.

2. When ur site already ranking well in the search engines, due to brand name etc, and you're satisfied with the traffic n sales the u don't require SEO.

I rank number one for my brand, as will most brands when you type their name in. I would also never be satisfied with my traffic and sales and will always look to increase my brand name under different key phrases, I will constantly look to add more content as part of my knowledge base to show authority on my subject, this in turn allows me to target new and more niche phrases. I will always strive to increase my brand awareness across the internet and that means using SEO/SEM techniques.

Why would you stop the SEO techniques that got you the top positions in the first place?

3. When you facing some business fallouts, then u need to concentrate ur resources n energy elsewhere rather than SEO.

This would depend on how many people you have in your company and whether your SEO chap was also your webdesigner/salesman/IT manager, see, I don't think this is an applicable reason.

4.If you are planning to revamp or redesign your whole site again then go for SEO only after you have restructured your site again.

I think this it goes without question, if you are going to redesign your site, SEO should be part of it, again, why would it not.

F.

[ukdaz]

Is Seo necessary?

Do bears **** in the woods?



Daz

[AbleReach]

Should SEO be necessary if your website is standards-conform and crawlable?

Isn't crawlable part of SEO? (nudging of devil's advocate)

I'm trying really hard to imagine a business that is successful without keyword awareness. Hmmm... not getting anywhere... crappy web site, maybe... but keyword awareness by some name is essential. SEO translates that awareness to something crawlable.

[joedolson]

I'm trying really hard to imagine a business that is successful without keyword awareness. Hmmm... not getting anywhere... crappy web site, maybe... but keyword awareness by some name is essential. SEO translates that awareness to something crawlable.

Not every business which is successful necessarily needs to have a website at all. I'm not saying that SEO and a good website wouldn't be helpful for everybody, but it's not _necessary_.

Here's an example:

A woman I know is a piano rebuilder and tuner. She's currently got an approved work backlog of about 6 years for rebuilds and gets new calls about tunings or rebuilds approximately two or three times a week. She has as much work as she can possibly do. She's approaching 60 and intends to retire within the next 10 or 15 years. She could retire within 5 if she chose, given her financial situation, but doesn't want to do it that soon.

She has no website and never has - does she _need_ SEO? Not every business success should be defined according to the standards of expansion - a lot of small businesses would ultimately prefer to stay that way.

I think it's entirely fair to say that every business that wants to expand MUST have a website and should invest in SEO in the modern internet climate. But that's not the direction that every business is necessarily taking.

Isn't crawlable part of SEO? (nudging of devil's advocate)

Only inasmuchas not building a really crappy site is part of SEO. Personally, there's a fine line between "web development" and "on-page SEO." Issues like crawlability are issues for retroactive SEO, but for a new website, it's an issue of web development. Any developer who would knowingly put together an uncrawlable website, in my opinion, is either a) incompetent or malicious. (And ignorance is not an excuse.)

An uncrawlable website is simply unprofessional.

[AbleReach]

...but keyword awareness by some name is essential.

What passes for "keyword" online could be the variables that define "market segmentation" offline.

[JohnMu]

Can you "do SEO" for someone (or company) who does not have a website?

[joedolson]

Can you "do SEO" for someone (or company) who does not have a website?

Sure. Starts with building a website. Where else would SEO begin? I don't see any reason that SEO shouldn't be at the forefront of any web development task. It shouldn't be an afterthought!

[SEOigloo]

Hello there, Kailyn, and thank you for starting this good topic.

I'd like to answer your question, first, by asking a question.

What is SEO?

The way I see it, nearly all that is involved in basic on-page, built-in SEO is really about using common sense to make a website as easy to use and informative as possible for your human visitors. We were doing SEO before we ever knew it was called that...back then, we thought of it as building good pages. I know that sounds pretty basic, but when we realized that you could make money building good pages, with clear titles, good written content, and friendly, easy-to-use navigation, because most of the other people building pages were making them horrible, cluttered and confusing, we suddenly discovered we were standing on the threshold of this thing called SEO.

It's my feeling that if you're going to build a website, why make a crummy one? Unless you really don't want people to see it, or your intention is to frustrate people who do see it with a maze or a mess, the basics of SEO should be built into any site that has the intention of being used by humans, regardless of how Search Engines will value it.

And, if the content really is good, you may find yourself getting links from people who find it important....so, again, you find yourself experiencing SEO. Linking out, too, happens naturally on any site that is trying to present some body of detailed information.

However, if the user has absolutely no wish to get traffic (which can sometimes be the case), once you've built a good, clean site, you wouldn't need to follow with the additional steps of hunting for links, linkbaiting, or the other tasks that fall both under the headings of high-level SEO and marketing.

SEO continues to have this aura of mystique that we find kind of funny...as though we're doing some kind of wild, secret tactics that only WE can know about. Though SEOs do often have neat little ideas and practices they've figured out when it comes to high-level tasks, the basics of SEO are really similar to what your English teacher taught you about the 5 paragraph essay or other school papers. Write a topic sentence, use sub-topic sentences, write clearly, be thorough, don't assume your reader has read the book in your book report, don't turn in a report covered with jam and fingerprints. And, of course, if you're going to use images...they are embellishments and you'll get an 'F' if your report on The Gorilla is nothing more than a photo of giant gorilla pasted to your piece of paper. I think these basics are things people with even basic education learned about long ago. Applying them to building web pages results in clean layouts, good content and, really, SEO.

My 2 Cents!
Miriam

This post has been edited by SEOigloo: Feb 5 2007, 04:09 PM

[projectphp]

"Perform" is an interesting word.

IMHO, SEO is just a perspective, like many other marketing and web dev things. Examples: Usability: that is just the users perspective. Measuring conversions is just the sales perspective. SEO is just the perspective that keeps SEs in mind when making changes.

When making changes on a website, it makes sense to look at the change from many perspectives, of which SEO should be one. IMHO to not think about the SEO impact of a decision, any web decision, seems a bad move.

However, how much more effort than considering SEs one puts into SEO is entirely up to the indiidual, and a different question altogether. Realistically though, if you are happy with your SEO traffic, you are already perfomring SEO, because you are watching your traffic, and what happens with SEs matters to you.

The only way to not perform SEO is to disregard any and all SEO advice, and what sort of crazy person would do that?

[kailyn_morgan]

hey guys,

I was recently doing some reserach on this topic itself and found that some of the people have some strange reasons for doing SEO for their websites. I wld lik to share some of most interesting reason with u all:

1. “I don’t have enough money.” - If you don’t have any money in your budget for SEO, simply use the organic SEO plan for your website. Believe it or not, you can make get substantial traffic to your website without spending a dime. n besides its PPC tht requires money n not Organic SEO.

2. “I don’t have enough time.” - SEO process is very flexible in nature. U can only spend an hour a day for ur SEO work and also get gud results for tht, though ur reslts will tak too much of time then. SEO is a continous work but does not require too much of time.

3. “My website sucks!” - Oh ya!!! Then SEO is the solution to all ur problems... as rightly said in this forum... SEO is all abt changing ur website n giving the target audience the most appropriate site to them on relevant keywords... Don’t give up! If everybody waited until their site was perfect before doing SEO, nobody would do SEO. (not at all indicating tht all the sites suck )

so plz u do need SEO no matter how ur website is... SEO is the answer for all...

[Sush]

Know your market and provide the relevant information which your customers are searching for. Make a user friendly site and see the effects which you can get from SE's. Oh! don't forget to optimize your title tag.