Is SEO Worth it in 2019? – The Cold Hard Truth

IS SEO WORTH IT
Is SEO Worth it in 2019? – The Cold Hard Truth

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Do you want to know if SEO will be worth it for you in 2019?

Well, you’ve come to the right place, because in this post, I’ll be answering exactly that.

I’ll be telling you if SEO is worth it for your small business and if you should do it to create a side income online.

We’ll also be going over the different types of SEO and what they actually are.

What is SEO?

SEO stands for (Search Engine Optimization). SEO is the act of putting pages of a website on search engines for search terms.

For example, let’s say you have a weight loss website and you find out people search for “best weight loss tablets”, 4,000 times a month on Google. To rank for this search term, you would create a page and have content within it talking about the best weight loss tablets. By creating that page and optimizing it for that search term, you would then rank on Google for it.

Why is SEO important?

 

Let’s say you’ve managed to rank on the first spot of Google for your selected search term, which was “best weight loss tablets”, so what now?

You could then have a product of weight loss tablets on that page and a “Buy Now” button. So you could literally be making money from that page you’ve ranked.

There are different types of SEO, such as affiliate SEO, local SEO, and E-commerce SEO.

If you’re a local business, let’s say you’re an electrician in London and one of the services you provide are electrical safety reports. You could then rank a page of your website for electrical safety reports in London. And when people land on your site through this search term, they could become a potential buyer (lead) and actually purchase from your business.

Can you see what’s happening? You’re literally growing your business through SEO.

What is affiliate SEO?

Affiliate SEO is my favourite form of a making money online business model.

Affiliate SEO is simply where you rank on search engines like Google for different search terms and sell other people’s products and services. And when you successfully make a sale, you get a commision/cut of the sale.

Benefits of affiliate SEO

  • Low risk since you’re not spending money to create a product or service
  • The income is much more passive than any other form of SEO
  • You don’t need to worry about customer support, shipping items or returns

How about E-commerce SEO, what’s that?

E-commerce SEO is just as it sounds. You rank your products for different search terms on Google.

Let’s say you have a gaming store and you’re selling customized Xbox controllers. You would then go after terms such as “customized Xbox controllers”.

 

The stability of rankings

This is the part where the is SEO worth it question is really answered.

If SEO is worth it or not all depends on how you’re trying to rank on Google and perceive ranking.

For example, let’s say you start up a blog today and a week from now you expect to be ranking on Google and making sales. If this is your plan, then SEO is not worth it for you.

You see, ranking on Google is a very slow process. When you start your website, you shouldn’t be expecting much or any traffic from search engines like Google for at least 6 months.

SEO is like planting a seed. You need to be constantly watering it and looking after it. And from there, it will grow. As time goes on, you won’t need to water it as much and it will grow on its own.  It’s a slow process and takes time for results to actually come in.

If you’re looking for instant traffic, then SEO is not worth it. Instead, you should be looking at paid traffic.

What if I want to make a side income online?

If you’re looking to make a side income online, I firmly believe SEO is one of the best things you could possibly do. (As long as you’re willing to put in the time and effort, SEO is not a get rich quick type of thing)

WHY?

Because it’s very low cost, high returns, fun to do, and you’ll be able to learn many useful skills that will benefit you.

Let’s say you decide to go with affiliate SEO which I highly recommend if you’re trying to create a side income online.

You would then create a blog. But what will your blog be about? The blog would be about something that interests you.

Let’s say you love working out, you would create a fitness related blog. Do you love video games? Create a video game blog. How about skincare? Go ahead and create a skincare blog.

Just make sure your blog is in a particular niche and not a general blog.

From there, you would create niche related posts. For example, I love video games so I would create my video game blog and I could create posts such as, “Are video games great for stress relief?”, “Top 10 stealth games”, “Health benefits of gaming” and you get the point.

After I’ve put out some long-form, interesting content, I would then create posts where I could actually make money.

To do this, I would sign up to an affiliate network like Amazon Associates and create posts promoting Amazon products.

For example, I could create a post on “The best gaming chair”, and then find a good chair on Amazon and promote that.

…Carrying on from when I mentioned, “how you’re trying to rank”…

How are you planning to rank?

If you’re going to try and spam Google’s algorithm to try and rank, save yourself a ton of time and forget about SEO.

Google is very intelligent and they can tell when you’re trying to game their algorithm.

And when I say “game”, I’m using it loosely. Because you will have to game the system to a certain extent.

More on that later…

But my point is if you’re just spamming links to your website all across the web and creating content that has no thought put into it and only a few words long, SEO is not for you. Because you won’t rank by half-assing things.

So how do I rank on Google?

ClickDo ranks number #1 for “SEO Consultant London” and has held this position for a very long time.

 

I won’t be going over the exact formula of ranking in this post, or else it would be 20,000 words long.

Instead, I’ll be going over the things you need to do to rank on Google in a broad way.

Create content

 

The first thing you’re going to want to do is actually create content. Since everything that shows up in the search engines is content.

Create a post and make it as in-depth and detailed as possible. You really want to help the user and always keep them in mind, since that’s how Google will be analysing your page.

Make sure you have a lot of words and images in your post. I would also recommend embedding videos and even audio files if it’s helpful to the user.

Optimize the content for Google (On page SEO)

On-Page-SEO-technqiuesAfter you’ve created your content, you’re going to want to optimize it for the search engine.

You see, the search engines are smart, but not smart enough to always detect what certain on page elements are.

For example, let’s say you’ve got an image of a cute brown dog. Well, the search engines won’t be able to recognise that it’s a picture of a brown dog. So what you’re going to have to do is type it into the alt text for Google to understand what it’s all about.

Promote that content (Backlinking)

 

After you’ve created the content, optimized it so Google can understand exactly what it’s about and published it…

…you’re going to want to promote that piece of content. More specifically, create backlinks.

What is a backlink?

A backlink is simply a link from one website, pointing to another website. The more you have, the higher you will rank. (Make sure each backlink is high quality if not, you’ll be hurting your rankings)

Remember when I said “you will have to game the system to a certain extent. and I’ll talk about it later on in this post”?

Well we’re going to be carrying on from there.

Creating a backlink to your website goes against Google’s terms of service.

But you’re going to have to do it because no one is going to link to your site.

Google has this thing where they say, build it and they will come. That’s complete and utter rubbish.

Creating the content is 5% of the battle. The other 95% is promoting it.

I’ve personally created content that was much more useful to the user than my competitors…

…did I outrank them?

No, because they had much more backlinks than me.

However, as soon as I built some backlinks. I blasted to the first page and in the top 5 competitive results.

So you’re going to NEED to create backlinks if you actually want to rank on Google.

REMEMBER THIS: The backlinks you create must be high-quality and have to be relevant.

So make sure you’re not getting backlinks from spammy websites. Here’s a rule, if the website looks dodgy or if it’s something that you wouldn’t trust or if the site links out to every Tom, Dick, and Harry… don’t get a link from them.

Make sure the topic of the webpage is relevant.

For example, if you have a skincare blog and the site that links to you is comic book blog… that makes no sense and Google will pick up on that and may slap you with a penalty.

If they don’t hit you with a penalty, then that link won’t be powerful since it makes no sense.

Should I outsource my SEO?

 

So you’ve realised SEO is a lot of work and you want to give it all to someone else to do or at least certain aspects.

Well, before you do hand over the SEO to someone else, here are a few things you’re going to want to know:

What’s the track record of that company or person?

You need to ask for a portfolio of the sites they’ve ranked and check out their reviews.

Learn SEO well enough so you understand exactly what they’re doing to your website

If you have no clue how to do SEO, guess what?

You don’t know what that person or agency is doing to your site.

Are they building garbage links to your site? Is their on page SEO good? Are they getting you quick results but will screw you in the long run?

Make sure you can understand these questions. They’re fairly basic and you don’t need to be an expert in SEO to understand this.

Conclusion

So I hope that answered your question on, is SEO worth it in 2019?

Author Profile

Zukais
I'm an SEO Consultant and expert in SEO. I help businesses rank their pages in Google, bringing them new leads, customers and ultimately, I help grow businesses with ClickDo Ltd, one of the most highly rated marketing agencies in London. I'm notoriously known as the SEO who squishes the competition when paired with a business owner who's serious about his SEO because I build some of the most high authority backlinks a person can get their hands on. I also like adding some heat in the Google results pages by having a robust Google Adwords campaign running.
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