Search Engine Land reported in its April 19, 2016 article “Forecast says SEO-related spending will be worth $80 billion by 2020” that in the next few years the total SEO spend by marketers in the US will continue its strong growth. Now more than ever it’s important for companies in every industry to understand that their marketing spend needs to focus heavily on online because competitors are investing greater shares of their marketing dollars there. SEO services will be more important than ever before to help companies hold and grow their market shares. Here are the top reasons why SEO services will be increasingly sought after:

1) Content is the main driver behind the need for more and better SEO services. Companies in all industries know today that even if they produce copious amounts of content, they need help planning its distribution. This entails sharing it in a timely way on the best channels where it will be seen by the right people. All of this doesn’t fall to chance. A smart SEO company is usually behind the execution of an effective content strategy.

2) Companies want more than ever to show positive ROI for their marketing efforts. Organic search marketing can help achieve that. An organic campaign is trackable with Google Analytics, Search Console and several other SEO tools. Decision-makers can easily turn data into action via reporting that is derived from the SEO services.

3) More companies are realizing that they can’t do it all themselves. SEO can be a time-consuming endeavor, even if a website is relatively small. The on-page and off-page tasks can steal hours from other key duties that many internal teams must accomplish. The goal is to get the most online visibility possible and then drive the qualified traffic to the website, where users convert. Increasingly companies have learned that they can successfully partner with SEO firms to achieve even better marketing results than if they worked alone.

4) Dominating local search is more important than ever and SEO services to build local buzz are worth more today and will be worth more tomorrow than they were even a few years ago. The rise of the small local business has much to do with the savvy SEO company behind the scenes working to outmaneuver hordes of competitors all trying to sell ‘cars in Atlanta’, ‘Seattle flowers’, ‘Oshkosh candy’, ‘Bentonville pizza’, ‘Harrisburg fishing gear’ and many more localized products and services.

5) Competitive analyses will need to be run more frequently. A top SEO company will be able to ferret out what its clients’ competitors are doing online. The intention isn’t to steal from competitors, but to emulate what those competitors are doing, if one finds that they have merit. A competitive analysis will let an SEO company match its services to the client’s needs. For example, if an analysis shows that the client’s website navigation needs to be updated, this will be noted and addressed.

The best SEO companies will become even better at positioning their clients for success. Expanded SEO services that focus on innovative video content creation and distribution and multi-featured blogs are just some of the pioneering strategies that a top SEO company can be expected to pursue on behalf of their clients as the space age-sounding year 2020 approaches.