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SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, has become increasingly popular over the past few years among e-commerce businesses exploring new marketing efforts - primarily due to the inconsistency and unprofitability of modern-day paid advertising. This strategy seeks to help businesses rank higher in search engines (like Google) to increase both the quality and quantity of traffic to their website.

The problem with most advertising strategies is that as you scale a campaign up, your costs scale up too, and profitability inevitably dwindles. Thats not even taking into consideration the day-to-day volatility of these campaigns.

The key difference between these types of paid advertising campaigns and SEO is that your costs stay more or less the same while traffic and revenue scale up. This leads to profit margins you may have previously thought were unattainable for a specific business.

SEO takes into consideration user experience, relevancy, authority, and more to determine where exactly your website ranks in Google.

All of these things combine to make up what is known as the Google Algorithm - a piece of artificial intelligence that serves as the deciding factor in whether you gain an explosion in traffic from page 1 rankings, or your website gets buried to the depths of the SERPs.

The idea behind the algorithm is simple - the AI seeks to present the most relevant, high quality content possible to Googles users - aka searchers. When users find exactly what theyre looking for on Google, they have a good experience - websites that help users have a good experience get rewarded with higher rankings.

However, mastering this Googles AI takes expertise. Keval Shah is the founder and CEO of Inbound Pursuit - an SEO agency focused primarily on e-commerce businesses looking to top the rankings in their respective niche.

In his previous role at a social media agency, Shah discovered that most paid marketing campaigns didnt produce the ROI they were expected to. These campaigns typically had lower profit margins and conversion rates than expected, along with inconsistent sales.

This is where SEO comes in to balance the scale. Conversion rates are way way higher, because youre dealing with people already looking for the types of offerings you have. Profit margins soar as your traffic scales, because your costs stay the same, while revenue rises. And while the algorithm does change from time to time - volatility is minimal on Google when SEO is done correctly.

Keval states, "Ad costs are always rising, resulting in less frequent sales and lower profit margins - especially as you scale. More recently, instability from iOS 14 has caused many businesses to see their revenue cut in half, as they put all their eggs in one basket - paid traffic. SEO is the solution to the modern businesses marketing woes in 2021.

According to Keval Shah, finding the right agency is the most important factor in whether you will be able to master Googles AI.

Keval Shah

So many business owners have been burned by SEO agencies that dont know what theyre doing, Keval says. This is one of my biggest motivators - changing the narrative around what you should expect when working with an SEO agency.

Shah believes that SEO is something that needs to be personalized for each business. Because the conditions of Googles AI are always changing, Shah believes it is crucial to constantly test and implement new tactics to make sure your campaign is at the leading edge of whats possible with SEO.

However, dont get bogged down too much by the newest version of the algorithm because the goal is always the same - create a useful, relevant website with high quality content that users will actually benefit from.

As more businesses discover the huge benefits of mastering Googles AI and SEO and realize that paid advertising is becoming an unprofitable rat race in 2021, it is likely that more companies will begin supplementing paid advertisements with SEO strategy.

Keep an eye on this trend, your business will not want to be left behind when it comes to adopting this innovative AI-forward marketing strategy.

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For Small Businesses, Mastering Googles AI Is A Better Investment Than Paid Ads - Heres Why - Forbes