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So, what is Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)?
Basically, SEO is the catch-all term for doing stuff to increase the visibility of your site in search engines. Done well, it puts you where you wanna be " the first page of Google!
When it comes to SEO, Google is the all-seeing, all-knowing lord of everything. Forget Ask Jeeves, Bing and DuckDuckGo, if you wanna be successful in organic search, start impressing Google.
But Im getting ahead of myself. This blog isnt about what SEO is, its about why its important.
Why should you, as a business owner, take your hard earned cash and invest it in this particular marketing channel?
Simply put, SEO is the holy grail of digital marketing.
Why?
There are so many reasons. Reasons long and reasons short. Reasons for you and reasons for them. Reasons for one industry and reasons for another. Too many reasons to talk about in a short blog. Way too many.
So Ive chosen four.
Four of my favourite justifications behind SEO. Four reasons why SEO is beneficial to any and every business.
To Build Brand Trust and Authority
Ranking higher in the organic search results signals to searchers that you are a top dog in your industry.
Just think about it. If I searched for architects in London, Im way more likely to trust the first result than I am the twenty-first. I mean, its the first result on Google, the first name on the list. Its the top dog and that means a lot.
With businesses that are ranking organically, consumers know that they havent just paid to be there like the businesses in the ad spots above them. They know that youre more likely to provide the solution that they are searching for.
To Increase Traffic
Pushing your website up the rankings ladder has a huge impact on the amount of traffic you receive. Dont believe me? Check out these mind boggling stats.
#1 Ranking Position: 32%
#2 Ranking Position: 17%
#3 Ranking Position: 10%
#4 Ranking Position: 7%
#5 Ranking Position: 5%
By the time you get to the second page of results, less than 1% of users are clicking on your website.
Looking at those numbers, its pretty clear why ranking higher is important. The difference between the second spot and the tenth spot can mean the difference between a mothballed website receiving a dribble of users every day and a thriving online space driving a business forward.
Its not just the volume of traffic thats important. Its the permanence.
First, lets think about paid search. With PPC, you pay Google and Google puts your advert on its network. As soon as you stop paying Google, your advert disappears and the traffic dries up.
SEO, on the other hand, is designed to last. With SEO, your current performance is based on all the work youve done previously. All the content youve created, links youve built and on-site optimisation youve completed.
That work doesnt disappear overnight and neither does the traffic.
If you improve your SEO and secure a good ranking position, you can sit back and watch the traffic roll in for months or years without doing anything at all.
To Get Insight into Your Customers
Another great benefit to SEO is that it provides trackable and quantifiable results found through Google Analytics. This allows you to analyse and adapt your strategy in the future.
Youre able to track pretty much every aspect of your work from the most popular keywords and traffic statistics to conversion rates and keyword rankings.
All this insight helps you understand your customers better. And understanding your customers, their goals, pain points and intent will allow you to target them better.
Theres A High ROI
So far we have showed you that SEO provides brand visibility, authority, sustainable traffic, conversions and customer insights.
But best of all, if you do it well, it can deliver a very high return on investment (ROI).
Unlike other marketing strategies which have high capital outlays, SEO is essentially free. Well, free in that you dont have to splash any hard cash.
However, you do have to invest resources. You have to invest blood, sweat and tears. We normally call them man hours but you can call them whatever you fancy.
And you need to dedicate a lot of hours into your SEO campaign to achieve the top position. But when you do you will reap the rewards.
But nail your SEO and you can increase sales, subscriptions or whatever your end goal is, without increasing your marketing costs.
We think this is definitely a worthwhile investment.
It Works Well With Others
Like most other marketing techniques, SEO doesnt exist in a vacuum and it doesnt work by itself.
Think of digital marketing as a cake. Wait! Hear me out! This makes more sense than it seems.
SEO isnt the whole cake but it is an important ingredient. A vital ingredient even.
Lets say its the batter for the cake. Sure you can bake this batter and it would taste nice and essentially do what a cake is suppose to do. But can you do more? What about the icing? The sprinkles? The candles?
SEO delivers all the good stuff weve talked about above but it does so incredibly slowly. To bridge the pretty lengthy gap between starting your campaign and seeing results, you need to introduce some quicker techniques.
SEO works at its best when its combined with other marketing strategies such as social or PPC. So why not check out Hootsuite and Google Adwords to get you started.
When one strategy lacks the other will pick up, and vis versa. Our article SEO vs PPCexplains it all.
We hope this article has persuaded you that SEO is both vital for your business as well as fruitful.
We understand that it isnt always easy to know what marketing strategies are going to work best for your business. So contact us here or call to book a free consultation.
