If you’re a marketer or business owner, you’ve likely been told that you should be using SEO (Search Engine Optimization) more than once or twice.
That’s because today, it’s an essential part of any successful marketing strategy.
But if you’re not familiar with this tactic, you might not be convinced that it’s worth your time or money.
And that’s why on this page, we’ll go over what is SEO in Marketing, the role it plays in marketing, and five key benefits it offers your business.
For starters, SEO stands for search engine optimization, and it’s the process of improving a website in ways that help it rank in search results when users search for specific words and phrases.
If you’re not sure why this matters, just think about how you normally find the information you need during your everyday life.
What would you do if you needed to replace your TV and weren’t sure which model to buy?
Where would you look if you were on vacation and needed to find a restaurant for dinner?
If you’re like most people, you’d reach for your smartphone or sit down at your computer and type a simple phrase into Google.
You’d search “best 55-inch tv,” “restaurants near me,” or “how to learn Spanish.” Then, you’d scroll through the results and click the one that seemed best suited to your needs.
These results are based on what Google thinks will be the most helpful information to you, based on the keywords you entered.
But in many cases, the sites you see ranking on the first page didn’t get there by accident. They used SEO to help Google understand what their content is about.
They also likely did extensive research to determine how users like you phrase your searches for specific topics so that they could optimize their page accordingly.
And if you want your target audience to find your site, you need to do the same.
The digital landscape has changed dramatically over the past few years, but SEO still remains an effective and important marketing strategy. While there are many benefits to a good SEO strategy, we have outlined the top 5 to help you understand (or remind you!) why SEO is awesome.
Top positions on the search engine result pages receive a majority of the impressions and clicks, so ranking in these top positions can result in significant traffic increases for your website. SEO also focuses on creating informative and keyword relevant title tags and meta descriptions, which show up in the result pages. Having optimized tags and descriptions helps to increase the click-through rate, which also promotes increases in qualified web traffic.
Since top position rankings result in significant impressions, having your website in these top positions on the result pages translates to more exposure for your website. Plus, being on the first page for your targeted keywords not only helps users to associate your brand with those keywords, but it instils trust since companies on the first page are generally perceived to be more trustworthy. The more your pages and content rank in high positions in the search engines, the more chances you have for users to see your content and associate with your brand.
SEO is one of the most cost-effective marketing strategies because it targets users who are actively looking for your products and services online. SEO’s inbound nature helps businesses save money as opposed to outbound strategies like cold-calling. While cold-calling can still be an effective strategy, the leads generated cost 61% more than leads generated by an inbound strategy like SEO.
In an effort to make your website easier to navigate for the search engines, SEO simultaneously helps to make your website more navigable for users as well. SEO consists of rearranging the site’s architecture and links to make pages within the website easier to find and navigate. This not only makes it easier for search engines to crawl your site and find pages but also makes it easier for users to find information on your website as well.
SEO provides trackable and quantifiable results, regardless of whether you are an e-commerce or non-e-commerce site so there are no qualms when it comes to ROI. SEO agencies are able to track nearly every aspect of their SEO strategy, like increases in rankings, traffic, and conversions. Comprehensive analytics also provide the ability to drill down at a granular level and see demographic information and other engagement metrics for individuals who have interacted with your website. E-commerce sites, SEO agencies can see which paths users take in order to complete a sale, all the way down to which keyword they used to search for you prior to purchasing. For non-E-commerce sites, you can attribute values to your lead conversions, like a ‘contact us’ form fill-out, and calculate the value of your SEO strategy that way.
Like what you read on the Importance, Advantages & benefits of SEO? For more information on how SEO could be beneficial to your website, or for a free SEO consultation, please contact us and we would be happy to help.