SEO isn’t a new term if you’re a business owner. It is the numero uno channel businesses use to climb up search engine charts.
In simple terms, Search Engine Optimisation (or SEO) equips your website to garner higher traffic across search engine results pages (SERP). So, it is one of the most potent tools in your digital marketing arsenal that can help your website rank higher in organic search results.
But if you’re still wondering, “Why do I need SEO services?” Here’s the quick deal:
81% of shoppers usually check online before making a purchase or avail of a service. So, no matter your business area, potential customers will likely look for your products or services on search engines like Google. Hence, it would help if you employed SEO for greater visibility.
Now to the larger picture: your business needs SEO for a wide variety of both nuanced and generic reasons. We discuss here the top 7 reasons why your website needs SEO:
1. Helps push organic ranking for visibility
Did you know that 71% of users never even check out the second Google search page? So your visibility has to cut through the competitive market of search results on the first page to grab attention. So an excellent organic SEO strategy to sustain this race is a must.
Hence, you must optimize a website with relevant content- including keywords, metatags with other tag attributes, and backlinking.
The term organic here implies it takes time and rises as your website grows. Since your website search volume (the frequency of a keyword searched over a given period) is constantly increasing, you’ll need to gauge how to optimize your content.
This SEO process as such is a crucial element of your broad marketing strategies in this growth process.
However, while SEO is powerful, it’s not the only tool to drive significant results. A sound marketing mix includes digital marketing efforts, branding, and social media engagement too for improved visibility.
Your website could be the first source of information about the business and eventually generate sales and other vital conversions. This may take time but is worth all the investment and efforts you put in.
So, take a moment to check this on-page SEO case study where the business received a 48% increased annual visibility and ranking.
2. Builds trust and credibility in your business
SEO can help strengthen brand image and value, for as Jonah Sachs puts it, “your brand is a story unfolding across all customer touchpoints.” So one of your essential goals would be to appear on top of search engine results and drive heavy web traffic your way.
To do this, most web users overlook paid ads and rely solely on an organic listing. With the help of SEO, you too can display a confident website’s title and meta description that places you as an authority and trusted expert in your area.
Once you’re seated on top of the SERPs, users perceive you to be among the best because, well, they see you first. You’re in the right place and at the right time when the prospect needs you. This leads to your business scoring high on credibility.
However, is authority easy to achieve?
It may seem easier said than done, but it’s for the long haul.
Gaining authority and credible positioning for your web pages is a slow process. So as a long term strategy SEO, consider including Google’s concept of E-A-T guidelines in combination with other marketing strategies:
- Expertise in the said area
- Authoritativeness of content
- Trustworthiness of service quality
How to follow EAT?
A good EAT SEO plan would include strong social media profiles, building valuable website content via blog posts, using target keywords, posting credible customer reviews, and securing backlinks from popular websites.
3. Is a practical & futuristic investment
SEO pricing may seem steep, especially for brand new websites of small businesses. However, just like all its aspects, you need to approach SEO with a vision to ensure your services are visible to interested customers.
Is SEO worth the cost?
Quality SEO is a layered strategy that involves advertising yourself inviting potential customers to eventually convert traffic into a successful sales process.
However, without good SEO work, Google (with about 86% of the search engine market share) wouldn’t even know your page exists to pop in top results. And this hurts the prospects of your online visibility.
With reasonable SEO efforts and content marketing, search engines will direct interested customers straight to your page without costly ad campaigns.
Let’s talk ROI
SEO is a solid component of a business’s marketing budget. It’s also a cost-effective tool. Polls suggest that over 50% of companies agreed that SEO has the highest ROI, while around 20% saw improved digital performance and return with paid search.
Sure there are short-term benefits of SEO tactics. But organic search engine optimization lays the groundwork for long-term returns. This holds even when your investment has ended.
Increased website traffic, rave reviews on user experience, and gradual authority status built via high conversion potential SEO measures will help you drive sales even when your PPC advertising goes off.
4. Local SEO attracts more traffic
General SEO can help rank keywords on a large scale, but local SEO targets specific customers in and around your location to get leads for higher conversions.
Recall how Google adds “near me” for any service or location you search online. This goes on to show that users are most likely to search for information/services closer to home.
What does this imply?
Local keywords are better than those for targeting national ranking. In fact, 76% of mobile users who look up a nearby service on their mobile devices check them out within a day, while 28% of the searches end up in a purchase.
5. Helps with knowing your customers better
It’s unlikely a single SEO plan will hit home the first time. You, therefore, need to keep a watch on the online content and SEO performance, tweak where necessary, and continue with what is working. A thorough understanding of your target market and customers becomes key to achieving your business goals.
Additionally, all the traffic reports and demographic details are available on services like Google analytics which will prove useful. You can find intel like:
- what keyword searches come through
- the location
- the language of search
- the day and specific time range of most activity
- the device used, et al
Once you’ve collated the data by, let’s say, organic visitors or top content or landing pages, there’s room for evaluation and updation.
Lastly, one approach to dive further into customer preferences is using the ‘Acquisitions’ tab in Google Analytics to identify which social media sites, blogs, and professional forums the traffic come from. You could apply the observations in your website persona to better understand where and when to approach customers.
6. Helps catch up with mobile searches
With consumers spending an average of 4.2 hours per day on their smartphones, it’s evident that your prospective customers are searching on-the-go, and deciding quickly.
Right from the best cafes in the city to a skilled dermatologist- search engines are driven by smartphones. Hence, you must optimize your website for mobiles. This will help you out with:
- Easy navigation
- Will lower website bounce rate and will make users stay and sift through pages
- Boosts conversions as majority use non-PC devices
Also, Google altered its algorithm to rank universal device-friendly websites higher than those otherwise. So now it’s imperative your site is accordingly optimized.
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Helps survive the competition
SEO is a continual exercise, and it gets better with the more time you invest. Ranking can change rapidly, as the market is ever-expanding, and everyone is on the SEO bandwagon.
If your site already ranks among the top, pat yourself on the back and amp your marketing while investing more in SEO to maintain the streak. With all companies eyeing the top spots, your competitors are always on the move for improvement of user experience, relevant keywords, strong socials, Google Adwords presence, pay-per-click ads, and a bunch of other tools.
If you are not already in the top SERPs, it’s the right time to keep a sound SEO marketing tactic in place.
As online shopping and content marketing is here to stay, they will also grow and evolve and grow SEO along.
Hire SEO experts for the job
If you already have a business and website to run, and it will need a whole set of wizardry to be successful on the internet.
But the good news is that there’s an entire business sector out there thriving on companies like yours. You can hire an SEO company to make your job easy and for effective results. With a host of marketing services that they offer, you can outsource the ardent tasks of keyword analysis, boosting site speed, and even hire agencies to write content for your pages.
The Road Ahead
If you want your website to shine, consider embedding SEO in your digital marketing strategy to get ahead.
The benefits are plenty, but a good SEO strategy is no longer a question of choice but that of necessity. It grants you the channel to project yourself on the world wide web as the answer to customers’ needs and questions by catching exact keyword searches.
The visibility and booming traffic organically pave the way for authority and popularity, leading to brand trust and eventually creating a loyal customer base for your company.
