In order for your business to be as successful as possible, you’ll need to establish a strong online presence. Having the best content, products, or services in your niche won’t matter if your customer can’t find you.
That’s where search engine optimization (SEO) comes in, a process that aims to increase your website’s visibility on Google’s search results. Once your business is able to link customers to your products, the true powers of SEO become limitless.
Not sure where to start? Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered.
Let’s take a look at everything you need to know about using SEO.
Wait— What Exactly Is SEO?
SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is the process of curating a website or page to cater to certain queries.
For example, if someone types in “plumbers” on their phone, they will want to see the most qualified and experienced plumbers in their area.
If someone asks a question such as “how to change a tire”, we would hope that the top results are concise instructions. It would be helpful to have a video and some images as well. The most helpful result will be the first, with subsequent links carrying less value.
Google gets smarter and smarter each day, but the end goal is always the same – to give you what you’re looking for.
While there are several hundred factors that go into ranking search results, the main idea is to match user intent with proper content. This content must be easy to understand, digest, and follow.
Listed below are some of the most important benefits to keep in mind.
More Traffic Volume
As you may expect, one of the most notable benefits of SEO is driving a higher amount of traffic to your website. In fact, it’s not uncommon during certain circumstances to experience exponential growth in the number of users who visit your company’s site.
For instance, you may have an informative guide published on your blog that gets 300 to 400 views per month. Once that blog reaches the first page, it’s highly likely that your views would skyrocket to tens of thousands per month.
Depending on how many people are searching for your target keywords, you could even find yourself with millions of views on that specific page. This traffic will propagate to other parts of your website and convert eyes to buys. The power of SEO doesn’t stop here.
More Relevant Traffic
Proper SEO techniques will ensure website traffic consists of users in your target demographic.
With powerful SEO comes powerful traffic.
SEO is not a digital billboard. It does not cast a huge net that hopes to catch something. Instead, SEO carefully finds and connects your business with customers.
For local businesses, this is especially critical. A niche business, such as a fashion retailer, would benefit most from a fashion connoisseur. Carefully crafted SEO strategies will pay close attention to the details that drive specific traffic.
Increased Customer Satisfaction
After targeting specific traffic to your website, the next task is to ensure an informative and pleasant user experience. If someone lands on your site but quickly leaves, it’s very likely they didn’t find what they were looking for.
However, this instance will affect a metric known as your website’s bounce rate.
This is one of the many attributes that Google uses in order to determine page ranking. Higher bounce rates indicate to Google that your content is either low-quality or irrelevant, causing the search engine to lower that page’s ranking.
As you may expect, this is something you want to avoid at all costs.
But, users who visit your site and find exactly what they were looking for will have a much higher level of satisfaction. This is a great way to forge long-term relationships with your audience that can facilitate additional sales in the future.
Long-Term Growth
Many entrepreneurs are familiar with the term pay-per-click advertising (PPC). This method generates immediate results based on the amount of money that you allocate toward it. However, PPC requires an expensive, ongoing cost that can only bring in a limited number of leads.
SEO, though, is slightly different. These results are procured organically and take longer to appear.
Search engine optimization isn’t something that’s going to work overnight. In many cases, it may even take months in order to see concrete results.
But, your strategies become more and more effective as time goes on.
This is especially true for webpages that solidify themselves at the top of Google’s search results for a high volume keyword. Imagine getting stuck at the top of search results for your product or service? The traffic this would bring to your business is 10-100x more than any billboard or paper advertisement could ever bring.
SEO continues to snowball the longer you work the campaign. While it’s never too late to get started, it will be harder to keep up with the competition if you delay too long.
Keep Up With Your Competition
In nearly every industry, the vast majority of your competitors are making heavy use of SEO strategies to reach their target demographic.
If you don’t take SEO seriously, it’s highly likely that you’ll fall behind your competition. For smaller businesses, this could make it impossible to thrive in your specific niche. For larger companies, it’s a guaranteed disaster if SEO is overlooked.
So, it’s in the best interest of your company’s future to take full advantage of search engine optimization as soon as possible.
SEO has the benefit of being content-based as opposed to budget-based. As an added side effect, it will also grow out your site and add content that will last forever. In fact, SEO is considerably cheaper than its most popular counterpart – paid advertising. It also happens to be more effective and carry a higher return on investment.
Is SEO Really That Powerful?
In a word, yes. Done properly, it’s the most effective way to market your business online. Marketing experts agree that SEO carries the highest ROI when stacked up against all digital marketing strategies.
In fact, in a study published by Search Engine Journal, 49% of respondents voted on SEO for the best digital marketing channel.
The longer you work your SEO, the more powerful it becomes.
Properly Implementing SEO Can Seem Difficult
It doesn’t have to be. The true powers of SEO can unlock a myriad of opportunities.
It’s clear that SEO can benefit your company, but not all SEO companies are the same.
Want to learn more about how we can help? Feel free to get in touch with us today to see what we can do.
