Early on when SEO really started to become its own marketing discipline, it wasn’t considered

legitimate. Sure, it was another tactic you could turn to. However, there were so many more you could employ to bring in business. This attitude was generally held by both sophisticated B2B marketing companies and small and local businesses. TV, radio, flyers, the Yellow Pages, newspaper ads…there was an abundance of marketing tactics available that still worked.

Today, you can still use all of these tactics. Yet, marketing’s morphed to a phase wherein SEO should really represent the focal point of your efforts. And trust us—we’re not just saying this because we’re an “SEO company.”

It’s just how things work now. Allow us to explain…

1. Consumers and B2B Buyers Simply Don’t Use Other Methods for Finding Businesses Like They Used To

When you think about it, TV isn’t the primary way information spreads anymore. It can still work for larger brands, but above all else, people head to the Web now.

Newspapers barely exist. Flyers can still work. So can direct mail. People forget information shared in radio commercials. Billboards seem to be just “there.”

It’s not so much that these tactics shouldn’t join your marketing strategy but that the Web is so convenient and widely used that other avenues have lost much of their potency.

2. Everyone Goes Online First to Get What They Need

Millennials—many of whom are clueless about life without an internet connection—number around 75 million and have entered their prime earning years. As a consumer group, they prefer to navigate the Web to get what they want.

Many C-level execs in search of a product or service assign their Millennial staff to do research for them. Older generations, of course, are quite used to the connected world and how it works as well.

SEO Must Represent the Central Focus of Any Marketing Strategy

Today, many businesses—both local and national—still minimize the importance of SEO in their marketing mix, viewing it as just another tactic rather than their central marketing hub.

However, this is becoming less of a choice as the years march on. Your customers, no matter who they are, want to learn more about you (and oftentimes buy from you) online. You can certainly use other tactics too, but now more than ever, SEO must remain central to your marketing efforts.