Is SEO Worth It Anymore? Fresh Perspective On 2024 Forecasts
Well, with all the fast paced changes that are happening in the SEO industry I find a lot of people questioning if it’s really worth it anymore.
You can work so hard to build up your SEO but if you’ve not done it right, or slip up on a few areas then you could easily lose your rankings or take a drop in your traffic.
Not only that, but we all know just how long SEO actually takes to kick start. For brand new websites, you’re looking around a minimum timeframe of 6 months before you can start to see some good traffic from your seo.
Of course, other challenges such as paid social media and Google ads prompt businesses to look at other avenues for faster revenues and online growth for them.
So, it really bids the question, is SEO even worth it anymore? Coming into 2024 with a huge amount of SEO changes over 2023, let’s take a deep dive to find out if it’s still worth your time and effort to focus on SEO as a marketing channel.
There Is No Doubt, The SEO Game Is Changing
There are no questions asked, the SEO game is extremely fast paced. There are at least 2-4 algorithm updates that happen each year across Google which prompt SEO specialists like myself to adapt to the quickly evolving landscape.
In 2023 alone, we’ve seen 10 algorithm updates which affect how your website and content is crawled, indexed and displayed on Google. The most recents being the November core update.
For anyone who is looking to get started in SEO, I understand how overwhelming it would be knowing you constantly have to keep up to date with the industry changes or else you’ll fall behind.
This could lead people to believe it’s not really worth it, but really it might just be because they don’t have the time to consider learning and keeping up to date with SEO.
On the other hand, people who have outsourced their SEO or have in-house specialists will probably argue that it’s certainly worth it, and a large form of leads or sales for their business.
AI Generated Content Has Made SEO Much Faster
Of course, in 2023 we really had the largest surge of AI blowing up with the introduction of Chat GPT, Bard AI and finally Elon Musk’s own Grok which has recently been released.
SEO specialists and business owners saw a quick opportunity to exploit the speed of which AI can generate their content and articles and decided to use questionable tactics of creating 1000’s of AI generated articles across the web to manipulate the search algorithm. This is called programmatic SEO, and I’ve written a blog on this here.
For some of us, including myself this can put you a bit of a question to ask. Well if these guys are creating this much content, then should I even bother with my SEO as the chances are I won’t get ranked?
I’ve even had clients say to me, should we bother doing any SEO when we can just create hundreds of AI articles and post them online?
Well, even with heaps of content you have online, you are still going to need to optimise that for users and search engines. This is where your SEO is going to come in. Technical SEO, link building and other strategies to actually get your content ranking.
Google Is Constantly Changing It’s Algorithms
As we’ve already slightly covered, Google is constantly changing their search engine algorithms. This leaves businesses in the mindset of confusion between whether or not they should do SEO, or if it’s simply just not worth it.
Well, what I can go on to explain is that although the algorithm is constantly changing, it’s not doing so in a negative way that you are going to lose your rankings the next time there is an update.
If you stick to white hat SEO techniques, then you will actually find these rankings are your best friends. They will bump you up in the search engine ranks and generate more traffic and visibility.
In fact, I’ve still got clients where I’ve worked on their SEO for 2 years, and they are still ranking in the prominent positions without having any SEO work done for 16 months.
When you look closely, their core algorithms have always stayed the same
Interestingly enough, if you actually check Google search engine guidelines in 2023, and compare those to ones released in 2011 you can see that their fundamentals stay exactly the same.
The only time you need to be worried about algorithm updates is if you are using black hat techniques or trying to manipulate the algorithm for your own benefit.
SEO is always going to be worth it if you are creating high quality content with a user first approach. Along with on and off page optimisation, you’ll see a nice increase in your website traffic and visibility.
"Make pages for users, not for search engines." -- Google, 2002
— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) July 6, 2023
Our good advice then remains the same over two decades later. To succeed in Google Search, focus on people-first content.https://t.co/NaRQqb1SQx pic.twitter.com/bibv53icz9
Google Received Over 80 Billion Visits In 2023 Alone
According to Statista, Google received over 80 billion visits from users alone in 2023. This is an almighty figure. If you are not doing SEO to try and capture your niche audience, then you could really be missing out in a lot of traffic and sales.
Still in 2023, and now coming into 2024, SEO is such an important strategy to gain trust with your customers and build an excellent brand presence. People tend to trust organic results over paid advertising results more.
It’s really worth considering SEO as your brand becomes bigger and you want to grow your online presence. It’s an avenue that can explode your traffic and sales and doesn’t require you relying on a monthly budget to get leads or sales.
Based on this figure, I’d say that SEO is very worth doing to help form an omni channel marketing strategy. If you look at the big brands, like Nike for example, you will see pretty much all of them will be doing SEO and will continue to do SEO coming into 2024 and beyond.
Nike will create an SEO strategy around their target audience to help generate sales and increase their brand trust. If they are doing it, why wouldn’t you do it?
Organic SEO Produces 1000% More Traffic Than Organic Social
Another interesting statistic coming from Higher Visibility suggests that SEO actually produces 1000% more traffic than organic social. This means if you want to get traffic from organic social, you need to have a huge following or likely pay the platforms for your content to be seen.
SEO on the other hand can allow you to capture organic traffic to your site through helpful content such as articles, videos, product pages and much more.
This probably makes sense since Facebook pretty much removed their entire organic algorithm to focus only on their paid platform. According to some data, their organic reach on Facebook only sits at around 1-2%.
Organic traffic from either SEO or social media comes with much higher intent and has a lot more trust from the user. If this is a pain point for you, then I’d suggest getting started with your SEO to boost up that type of traffic.
Here's my organic post on social which got very low visibility.
For My Clients, SEO Has Driven Over 300 Leads Per Month
For me alone, I’ve seen the benefits of SEO and this blog is a perfect example of why I still think it’s worth it for my business and my clients business.
Organic traffic from SEO builds trust with the reader. If they find value from the content you have put out, most likely they are going to explore your site and services more. The same for e-com. People will trust your product more than others.
This has allowed me to see a huge increase in lead generation and sales for my clients. I’ve even seen over 300 leads per month come exclusively from SEO for one of my clients.
The return on investment for this is insane. And of course, because I only focus on white hat SEO, this stays the same for years to come even through all the algo changes.
So, without being too biased, I can actually prove that for me and my clients, SEO is most certainly a channel that is worth pursuing.
Arguably, SEO Has Never Actually Been Easier Than Right Now
Not only that, but I’d argue that SEO has never been easier than this moment right now. Google is focusing on promoting high quality content which in a world with search engines plumped up with AI generated content, means yours is going to be easier.
Honestly, if you are considering SEO then I’d suggest focusing on a few main points. Make your site ultra user friendly, and make it so helpful that users actually want to return to use your website again.
Focus on providing above average experiences right from your site. For example, if you are an SEO specialist, why not create a platform on your site that allows your clients to jump on, put in their URL and check through their current status and reports?
If you are a business that provides quotes or things like this, provide online experiences like calculators, instant quotes and other tools where users can get a good experience and feel more trusted towards you.
Lastly, provide free advice and free content in the forms of blogs and articles. Answer user first questions and provide hidden gems that your competitors might want to share. Google released their hidden gem update, so now it’s even easier for you to rank.
Based On This Information, SEO Is Still a Leading Marketing Channel
Well, it’s safe to say that based on the above information, I still believe that SEO is worth it. It’s still a leading marketing channel for a huge amount of businesses and as I mentioned above, all of your favourite big brands are doing it.
As we come into 2024, if you are not doing SEO then you might get left behind. Put it this way, if you are not doing it, and your competition is… Then who is going to grow faster and capture the large market share?
Your competition.
Don’t let that be the case, get started with your SEO fundamentals and start building out your domain authority through link building.
Of course, I understand that SEO requires time. So start by trying to spend 1-2 hours per week on it and work up from there. Or just simply hire an SEO specialist.
Conclusion
I hope that I have helped clear up the question of whether or not SEO is going to be worth it anymore. Looking into the future, SEO still shines bright.
2024 will be another exciting year for SEO so it’s important to jump on the wagon with all of us as early as you can.
Don’t get put off by the length and time it takes to get results, as everyone is in the same boat. Once you get the ball rolling, it becomes easier from there.
Once your SEO is booming as well, I’ve never once heard anyone say “oh, it’s still not worth it”.
Anyway, share your thoughts in the comments below!
