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Four Key Reasons to Prioritize SEO

Many companies ask the question, “Should I make SEO a higher priority within my organization, or can it wait?” Often, there is not been a deep understanding of the impact related to holding off on SEO initiatives. In this video, Matt Crowley, Director of Optimized Services at MoreVisibility, outlines four key reasons why organizations should prioritize SEO higher within their marketing function. We have also outlined these four reasons below:

1. There is an opportunity cost to waiting: Choices between what to focus on will always have to be made, and there will almost always be an associated opportunity cost. This holds true for SEO, as well. Prioritizing other initiatives ahead of SEO can have an opportunity cost related directly back to revenue or leads that could have been generated for your business.
2. Your company could be missing out on low hanging fruit by waiting: There may be impactful opportunities that you could take advantage of now, without dedicating a large amount of resources. If you haven’t started focusing on SEO, there may be low hanging fruit on which your organization is missing out. When you are ready to make SEO a priority, those same low hanging fruit opportunities could be gone due to changes in the search landscape or your competition (see #4 below).
3. Your company could be gaining a better understanding of future resource needs: The earlier you can start thinking about SEO, the better and earlier you will understand future resource needs. You will have a head start on making decisions related to future capital allocation and more time to hire for the right needs internally (will you need talent that is specialized in technical, content, marketing, etc.) or externally (agency partners, software vendors, etc.).
4. There are competitive disadvantages to waiting: Your competitors are not going to hold off on their SEO initiatives while you hold off on yours. This can create a difficult-to-overcome gap between their positioning and yours as time goes on. SEO is a long-term investment and starting early can have significant long-term advantages. If your current competition continues executing on their plan, or if new competitors enter the market, you could find that your organization is significantly behind the eight ball when you are ready to focus on SEO.