Yes, SEO does have Cons. Before understanding the cons of SEO, let’s start from the beginning. Have you started promoting your website to establish your business in the online world? But what digital marketing channel have you chosen to make your website appear in front of the target audience? Of course, most digital marketers claim that SEO is the best strategy to make your business website easily discoverable. You might have created the most effective SEO strategy to bring organic traffic to your website. So, you are already aware of the benefits of SEO. Nevertheless, SEO campaigns may lead to some disadvantages as well.
Time-Consuming
The biggest disadvantage of SEO is that it is a time-consuming process. The ongoing process needs consistent effort, including content optimization, keyword study, link building, etc. So, with patience and dedication, you may get the desired result. It takes several months or even years to find improvements in your website’s visibility in search results. Other reasons why SEO is a time-consuming campaign-
Setting Up a Strategy
Creating an SEO strategy takes time. A strategy is a plan on how you will implement your SEO tactics. You cannot bring qualified traffic to your website without a proper strategy. The goal is to get more web traffic and generate more leads. Besides, your SEO plan must be well-integrated across all channels to develop a highly cohesive marketing strategy. You must depend on professionals to build a strong rapport between your target audience and brand.
Need more research
Search Engine Optimization is partly art and partly science. With intensive research, you will be able to drive the rank of your website. Besides, it is essential to conduct website audits and generate SEO-friendly content. These SEO factors make the process more daunting. If you can manage these factors, you can make your SEO campaign successful.
Monitoring Results
Monitoring the web traffic and Conversion Rate is another crucial task that needs to be done regularly. Some novice SEO professionals cannot think of where to start while monitoring the results. They need to identify the main metrics to measure the impact.
Moreover, SEO specialists need to be aware of the SERP position of the website. It measures how well they have managed the search intent of your keyword. SEO specialists have to provide valuable and relevant information for target readers.
Google uses different ranking factors to position the website in the organic search results. So, you have to follow Google’s E-E-A-T guidelines to create quality content.
Frequent updates of Search Engine Algorithms
The algorithms of Google and other search engines are always dynamic. Major algorithmic updates may also significantly affect your website’s rank. So, SEO professionals always need to pay attention to the latest algorithms to avoid losing the ranking of the website.
It is really a nightmare when you notice a sudden drop in traffic or face a Google penalty. Thus, the lack of algorithm control is a big demerit of SEO. If you cannot update your website according to the latest algorithms, your search engine rankings will degrade slowly.
To avoid these issues, you must develop relationships with industry experts and SEO professionals. It lets you learn about the latest SEO trends and adjust your website accordingly.
Costly Investment for Small Businesses
You might have heard that Google does not charge you for ranking your website in the search results. But, you need to make some investments to achieve the desired rank.
Initial Fees for Services and Tools
Whether you are a startup or have a small business, you need to work with an SEO Company. So, you need to pay SEO professionals for their services. However, the main costs are related to the SEO tools and software. You can find different types of SEO tools with paid and free versions.
You can continue using free tools to optimize your website. However, they will not provide you with comprehensive information for your website. So, you are bound to buy the premium versions. But, only some tools are intended for SEO.
For example, Google Ads Keyword Planner is a reliable online PPC or paid search marketing tool. However, it is not designed for SEO campaigns. Keywords for PPC ads are slightly different from keywords for SEO. Thus, the biggest disadvantage of SEO is that you need to pay a lot for software licenses or tools. Using the paid tools, you can run a successful SEO Campaign.
Ongoing Expenses for Maintenance and Updates
Maintaining the website rank throughout the year is impossible for a business owner. So, you must pay the SEO professionals to update your website constantly. Of course, the SEO packages of every company are different. It would help if you compared them to get the best services at an affordable rate.
Some companies show the breakdown of costs of different services, such as
- Link building
- High-quality content development
- SEO Consulting
- Keyword research
No Guarantee of Results
You might have already worked on every ranking factor for the SEO of your website. Still, you have yet to find the desired result. It is one of the most significant downsides to SEO. For this reason, reliable SEO agencies do not guarantee that you will get the outcome within a couple of months.
In the search marketing world, no guarantee will work. You should continuously work on ways to get better results. Once you have achieved a high rank in the SERP, it does not mean you will stop running the SEO process. Google continuously tweaks and improves algorithms. So, your SEO techniques also need refinements. Most SEO variables are beyond your control, and you will have the best outcome only with continuous effort.
Technical Errors Can Hurt Rankings
Understanding the technical issues takes time and effort. Without high expertise, you cannot deal with the technical SEO details. You need to check duplicate content, page description or page title issues, broken links, the presence of several on-page links, and low text-to-HTML ratio. SEO professionals also need to deal with missing alt tags, broken images, and Robots.txt files.
End note
SEO is an essential strategy for a digital marketing campaign. However, integrating the search term is a way to achieve success in SEO campaigns. You need to undergo a daunting process to find the result from SEO. You alone will not be able to manage every aspect of the SEO. So, you have to engage a team to deal with it. Besides, higher industry competition and frequent algorithmic updates make the SEO process more difficult. Still, SEO is crucial and gives you long-term benefits. To avail most of the SEO you need to contact a top-notch business SEO consultant. He might not give you a guarantee of success, but would give you actionable advice.