What Is SEO and How Can It Help Your Business?
Unlike paid advertising where visibility stops the moment you stop paying, SEO creates lasting results. Content you optimize today can continue driving traffic and leads for years.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the practice of improving your website so that Google and other search engines can find it, understand it, and show it to people searching for the products and/or services you offer. When someone types "best pizza near me" or "affordable accounting services in Denver" into Google, SEO determines whether your business appears on the first page of results or gets buried on page ten where no one will ever see it. It's not about tricking search engines or gaming the system. It's about creating valuable content, building a trustworthy website, and ensuring the right people can find you when they need you.
From Simple Beginnings to Complex Strategies
Back in the mid-1990s, when search engines first emerged, getting to the top of results was amazingly simple. Businesses would stuff their web pages with keywords hundreds of times, often in white text on white backgrounds so visitors couldn't see them. If you wanted to rank for "Chicago dentist," you'd just repeat those words hundreds of times.
Search engines caught on quickly. Google revolutionized the field in the late 1990s by introducing algorithms that evaluated not just keywords but the quality and relevance of content, the number of other reputable sites linking to you, and hundreds of other factors. Over the years, these algorithms have become increasingly intelligent, now using artificial intelligence to understand user intent, context, and even the quality of the actual information provided.
Today's SEO requires genuine expertise. It involves technical website optimization, creating content that truly helps your audience, earning credibility through high-quality backlinks, ensuring your site works flawlessly on mobile devices, and keeping up with ever-changing algorithms. SEO has evolved from a simple trick into a fundamental and crucial business discipline.
The Real Benefits of SEO
The advantages of investing in SEO extend far beyond just getting more website visitors. First, SEO brings you qualified traffic—people actively searching for what you offer at the exact time they need it. Unlike traditional interruptive advertising, SEO connects you with people actively seeking solutions. This means higher sales and better ROI.
SEO also builds credibility. When your business appears at the top of search results, potential customers perceive you as an authority in your field. It's the digital equivalent of having the best storefront location in town. Additionally, unlike paid advertising where visibility stops the moment you stop paying, SEO creates lasting results. Content you optimize today can continue driving traffic and leads for years.
Perhaps most importantly, SEO levels the playing field. A small local business with a smart SEO strategy can outrank much larger competitors who ignore it. You're competing on relevance and value, not just advertising budget.
The Evolution Into GEO and AEO
In 2025, SEO is extending out into two related disciplines: Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) and Answer Engine Optimization (AEO). As more people search for information using AI chatbots like ChatGPT, Claude, and Google's AI overviews, businesses must optimize not only for traditional search results but for how emerging AI systems understand and present information.
GEO focuses on ensuring your content gets cited and referenced when AI tools generate responses to user questions. If someone asks an AI assistant, "What's the best CRM software for small businesses?" you want your product or expert content to be part of that AI-generated answer.
AEO takes this further by optimizing for direct answers. When someone searches "how to file a trademark," search engines and AI tools now often provide immediate answers rather than just links. If your content provides those answers in a clear, authoritative way, you gain visibility even when people don't click through to websites.
The benefits gained with traditional SEO transfer directly to success in this new AI landscape. Businesses investing in SEO now are positioning themselves for how search will work in the future, not just how it works today.
Your Competitors Are Doing It
Should you be doing SEO? Your competitors certainly are! A recent survey found that 61% of marketers say improving SEO and growing their organic presence is their top priority. That's not a coincidence. Your competitors understand that when potential customers search for products or services in your industry, being invisible means being irrelevant. Every day you delay is another day they're capturing leads that could have been yours. They're building domain authority, creating valuable content, and establishing themselves as the go-to solution in your shared market space.
This isn't about keeping up with trends. It's about remaining competitive in a marketplace where consumer behavior has fundamentally shifted. Over 90% of online experiences begin with a search engine. If you're not in search results, you're effectively invisible to your potential customers.
Can You Afford to Implement SEO?
SEO requires investment, whether that's hiring a specialist or dedicating internal resources to learning and implementation. SEO is a highly time-intensive endeavor that can cost between four and five figures per month. It is also a gamble, as SEO offerings today are as numerous and ineffective as miracle weight loss plans and get-rich-quick schemes. “Experts” promise quick, guaranteed results but rely on outdated tactics that do more harm than good. Search engine algorithms evolve constantly, making yesterday’s strategies obsolete or even dangerous.
But when done right, SEO is truly one of the most cost-effective marketing strategies available. The cost per lead from organic search is typically far lower than paid advertising. Once your content ranks, it continues generating traffic without ongoing ad spend. You're building an asset that appreciates over time rather than renting visibility that disappears when you stop paying.
Can You Afford NOT to Implement SEO?
What is the cost of invisibility? Every potential customer who searches for what you offer and finds your competitor instead represents lost revenue. Multiply that by hundreds or thousands of searches per month, and the opportunity cost becomes staggering.
Consider this scenario: you're a B2B software company, and your average customer is worth $50,000 over their lifetime. If strong SEO could deliver just two additional qualified leads per month who convert to customers, that's $1.2 million in annual revenue. Even if you invested $5,000 monthly in SEO—$60,000 annually—the return would be 20-to-1!
Beyond direct revenue, not investing in SEO means you're conceding market positioning to competitors. As they build authority and capture mind share, reclaiming that ground becomes progressively harder and more expensive. The gap widens every month.
In 2025, asking whether you can afford to implement SEO is like asking whether you could afford a phone system in 1995 or a website in 2005. It's not a luxury or an experimental tactic. It's fundamental business infrastructure for companies that want to thrive in a digital economy.
The Bottom Line
Your market isn't getting less competitive. Search algorithms aren't getting simpler. Consumer behavior isn't shifting back to Yellow Pages and cold calls. The only question is whether you'll be visible where your customers are looking or whether you'll keep wondering why your competitors seem to be everywhere online while you're struggling for attention.
SEO is how businesses succeed in a world where everyone's first instinct is to search for what they need online. The real question isn't whether you can afford to invest in SEO—it's whether you can afford to let your competitors have that space all to themselves.
Lost Highway Media has built, and continues to build, a track record of proven success in the art and science of SEO. We apply safe, effective white-hat strategies that get our clients’ websites to the top of search engine results pages (SERPs)—quickly. And we do it at a fraction of the cost of our competitors.