If you are a business owner or a marketer, you must have been told you should be using SEO more. Nowadays, people rely on search engines to help them discover anything, whether locating an address, shopping for a product or service, or looking for educational courses.
Search engines have become among the most important marketing tools, and this helps business owners to generate thousands of leads every month. This read will look at the benefits of SEO and why it makes a crucial part of the company’s digital marketing strategies.
What is SEO in Marketing?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, a process of enhancing your website traffic in ways that will help to rank in search results when users search for specific phrases and words. SEO means as much about people as it’s about search engines.
In simple words, it’s a way of increasing the quantity and quality of your website’s visitors by enhancing the organic rankings in the algorithmic search engine results.
What are the Benefits of SEO?
Although SEO is not a cost but more of an investment in your long-term marketing strategy that will impact your results. If you are unsure of the benefits of SEO, below are some of the major ones:
1. Increased Target Traffic
A major SEO benefit is that it helps drive a great amount of targeted traffic to your website. Targeted traffic comprises all the visitors who land on your site and get the exact product or content they are searching for.
The top spots on search engine results will automatically receive the most impressions and clicks. Therefore, ranking these top positions will result in a significant traffic increase for your website. SEO strategies focus on creating informative and keyword-relevant title tags and meta descriptions. Having optimized tags and descriptions will help increase the click-through rate, promoting an increase in quality traffic.
Targeted traffic will always offer plenty of benefits, including:
a). Increased Sales
When you add more related affiliate links to your content, if a customer is looking for the same content, you’ll get more clicks and, therefore, more sales through the affiliate links.
b). More Subscribers
Some people show more interest in a specific topic. If your blog is based on a specific niche, visitors from search engines will be tempted to follow your blog and subscribe to your social media or newsletter. Since all visitors coming from the search engine are organic traffic, they have the exact content they want on your blog.
c). Reduced Bounce Rate
Bounce rate is the time interval between the percentage of visitors who entered and exited your site. If your visitor leaves the site fast, it is known as a high bounce rate, and if they dwell longer on the page, it is known as a low bounce rate.
A low bounce rate will help improve SEO rankings because if visitors stay on your web pages for long, Google will know that your page has some valuable information to the users, which leads to getting a high ranking on Google.
2. Cost-Effectiveness
SEO is the base of successful inbound marketing, and it can help optimize cost management to save resources from the different divisions of your business. In addition, it is among the most cost-effective marketing strategies since SEO targets users actively looking for your products and services online.
Thanks to the SEO’s inbound nature, it helps businesses save money, unlike the outbound strategies such as cold calling. Even though cold calling can still be an effective SEO strategy, the SEO leads generated cost 61% more than the leads developed by an inbound strategy such as SEO.
In addition, since SEO targets the users actively searching for products and services similar to yours, the traffic from SEO will be more qualified than other digital marketing strategies, resulting in saving costs for companies.
3. Return on Investment (ROI)
When evaluating the digital marketing channels, return on investment (ROI) is a consideration, and it’s among the most priority. While SEO results might take time, a high-quality strategy will eventually deliver an impressive ROI.
SEO gives quantifiable and trackable results regardless of whether you are working with e-commerce or a non-ecommerce site. SEO agencies will be able to track almost every aspect of their SEO strategies, such as traffic, rankings and conversions.
Ecommerce sites and SEO agencies can see which paths users take to make a sale down to which keyword was used before making the purchase. However, for the non-Ecommerce sites, you can credit the values to your lead conversions, such as filling out the ‘contact us’ form and calculating the SEO strategy’s value.
4. Brand Awareness
SEO has another benefit: promoting a higher degree of brand recognition among your most potential customers. Since the high position rankings will give significant impressions, having your websites in the top positions on the result pages will translate to getting more exposure for your website.
In addition, when on the first page for your target keywords, it will help users associate your brand with the keywords and instill some trust since people perceive the companies on the first page as more trustworthy. The more your pages and content will rank in high positions in the search engines, the better the chances you will have for users to view your content and associate it with your brand. If your company continues to get high-quality content, your brand will become more known.
5. Increased Site Usability
SEO and user experience go hand-in-hand, and the future of SEO leans towards creating an improved user experience. SEO helps make your website more navigatable for users to make your website easier to navigate for the search engines.
SEO rearranges the website’s architecture and links to ensure that pages within the website are easy to find and navigate. This will make it easy for search engines to crawl your site and locate pages while making it easy to get information about your website.
Now, anytime potential customers come across your site, you can expect higher conversion rates and more clicks on your business. Since nowadays customers want brands that get straight to the point, SEO rewards them by doing so, and if you maximize the visitors, then SEO will keep sending your more customers.
6. Ups your Local SEO Search Game
For a company or brand to take the world by a storm, you will first need to seize the opportunity you have with your local community or local searches. A local search is one of the best methods to build your brand’s online presence, but you have to ensure all your brand information is up-to-date, such as the phone number, business hours and company address.
When starting with a local SEO strategy, the first step is creating a Google My Business account and asking customers to write an online review. This will help you gain local organic search results and more in-person visits.
Optimize your listings, ensure you have the correct name, phone number, and address, and optimize your listing for a voice search. This means you should write rich and compelling content in a conversational tone to answer the most common questions and solve the searcher’s problems.
7. Reduce Promotional Cost
One of the huge benefits of SEO is that it’s completely free, and if an online business owner wants to thrive, people should start knowing it. SEO will help your website reach more people at a free cost, and you don’t want to pay to make your website appear in the search results if you can do that by doing a proper SEO for your web pages.
If you know about search engine optimisation, you can optimize all your web pages with the search engines without incurring any expense. If you want to reduce advertising costs but make your pages rank, you should concentrate on factors such as:
- Write high-quality content
- Domain authority
- Focus on On-Page SEO
- Get more Backlink
- Keyword Research
8. Get Backlinks
Backlinks are when a web page link to other sites or pages, and there are two types:
a). Internal Backlink- When writing new content, it’s called an internal backlink if you link back to some of your older content on your site.
b). External Backlink- If you link your content to external web pages which don’t have the same domain as your content, it’s known as an external backlink.
SEO professionals like linking back to highly trusted web pages with high-quality content. If some webmasters or bloggers need to link to a webpage when information is available on the same topic, they wil first check on search engines such as Google.
If your web page is optimized and has a good ranking on the search engines, people will see it first and link it to that web page since most people trust Google and their results. The backlinks will be doubled daily if the web pages have a good ranking on the search engines such as Google.
How Does SEO Work?
SEO has all to do with quality and quantity, and the better your website will be on the front and back end, the better the traffic will get and the more the search engines will boost your search rankings. Building SEO will work by combining SEO elements and using a data-driven approach. We will look at how each element strengthens your SEO for digital marketing techniques. These factors may include:
a). Keyword Analysis
Words are very powerful, and some words have the power to control your online visibility and rankings. The relevant keywords can be single words or phrases that people often use to find what they are looking for. Therefore, the relevant keywords should be researched and strategically put in your content to get high-quality content and hence competitive advantage while utilizing the often searched words.
Keywords are among the main reasons you need SEO for your business, as prospective customers use certain words and phrases to search for a product or service. If your content includes the words and phrases used, it will increase visibility since you offer answers using appropriate keywords. The most effective SEO keywords will be the ones that are carefully researched and analyzed to come up with the right SEO strategies.
b). Backlink Building
Backlinks are the elements on your website that link back to credible and reputable websites. It improves your credibility since you cite sources relevant to your area of expertise. For instance, including trending events directly from their source can increase your site’s credibility maximizing organic traffic.
Backlink building should be strategically done to avoid your content getting lost in the sea of other sources and wasting your SEO efforts. Of course, it will also enhance your SEO strategy, but it should be done carefully and ethically.
c). Content Creation
Content is where search engine optimization comes to fruition, and it allows you to communicate with the target audience, whether existing or prospective customers. Your content is where the keywords will help you build trust, consistency, trust and engagement, and great content can balance the human side of your business.
With data-driven Google analytics, you will successfully optimize your digital presence. Content marketing can include anything your audience hears or views, including:
- Social media posts
- Blogs
- Webpage text
- Infographics
- Videos
- Podcasts
- Newsletters
Your content marketing will drive SEO by engaging directly with the current and potential customers and hence drives quality traffic where your content will inform your audience who you are and what you offer.
Is SEO Necessary?
Yes, SEO is a necessary digital marketing strategy for any business that needs to reach more potential customers and boost its revenue and sales. It is a data-driven yet intentional approach that increases the quality of your digital marketing efforts and the visibility your business will receive.
SEO benefits will help your business and make it worth the time the SEO team or SEO specialist spent researching since it takes a lot of deliberate analysis. However, if you are not currently taking advantage of SEO tactics, you miss out on many potential sales and leads. Luckily, SEO services are an affordable yet successful marketing strategy that will give you the best results by boosting your digital presence without breaking your bank.
SEO vs. SEM
As you learn about expanding your company’s visibility, you might come across another term in digital marketing, SEM. While some marketers may use the term interchangeably with SEO, there is a difference, and it’s important to understand the distinction.
SEM standing for search engine marketing means anything you will do to get placement on search engine results pages. This makes it an umbrella term that includes both SEO and PPC campaigns.
Although SEO is a form of SEM, it’s not the only tactic involved in SEM.
What is the Difference Between Paid Search Results and Organic Searches?
A big part of digital marketing is search engine marketing (SEM) which is paid search marketing, and it’s not necessarily a negative thing. Pay-per-click marketing campaigns use research to help in increasing your return on investment (ROI), and you should be aware that more people will recognize which SERP results are organic and which are ads. Notably, gaining organic search traffic is the main goal.
Organic traffic can be improved using tools such as paid search campaigns to offer more visibility, and as a consumer, you may be interested in finding results that don’t have the word ad next to them. Paid search campaigns can be utilized to your benefit if done well, and they can market your business intentionally to your target audience.
An organic search utilizes more SEO tactics like keyword searches, and this will ultimately mean that your content will show up for a wide range of potential viewers who need a particular need met.
What Can SEO Do for Your Business?
a). Build Trust with Customers
SEO services and user experience (UX) work together, and building trust organically is how SEO will benefit your business. User experience is how your audience will interact with your website. When customers have a positive experience with your business, you get more clicks, increasing traffic and increasing SEO.
This organically, over time, will increase your rank on the search engine results page (SERP) and get you close to the top ten spots. The user experience also involves how well customers can navigate your site where it should be solid and sturdy.
Building trust will organically build SEO, and it will continue to grow and optimize your business and digital marketing as a whole. If you deliver what your customers are looking for, you will become a trusted source that customers can depend on. However, if you don’t meet the user standards, SEO will suffer, but the more trust you gain, the better the SEO and UX of your digital marketing.
b). Create Visibility that Attracts Clientele
Attracting business visibility organically means that your website appears thanks to what your customers have searched, and customers will look for you based on their needs. SEO is a path for visibility. Depending on your purpose, it can impact the purchasing cycle and knowing what people may be looking for will happen by conducting thorough SEO research.
Where Should You Start with SEO?
Now that you know SEO benefits and are unsure of where to start developing an SEO strategy can be difficult. Since there is too much SEO data to address different trends, implementations, and best practices, it cannot be easy to jump into SEO research.
To apply digital marketing to your business and enjoy the benefits of SEO, it’s worth starting your search engine optimization journey by conducting a thorough market analysis. Start by exploring competitor sites, signing up for lead generation content and leveraging keyword research to understand your competition better and start implementing an SEO strategy.
To jumpstart your research, you can use tools or some courses provided that offer free resources to assist you in dipping your toes into the market to understand SEO without investing many resources upfront to gain market share. Nevertheless, keep in mind that SEO might take some trial and error since no one has the exact recipe for a successful SEO.
Notably, SEO companies have mastered the methods and ingredients that have been proven to work, and they continuously test and go through again to find improvements. A perfect example where you will find the best SEO specialists is Indexsy.
Frequently Asked Questions on Benefits of SEO
1. How Can You Increase Your Organic Traffic With SEO?
Generally, the first few results on the first page will get the most clicks, but it’s not always the case. If you can find ways to attract more clicks even when your pages are ranking lower than you would like in the search results, you could increase your traffic without needing to outrank your competitors.
Start using Google Search Console to identify the pages with high CTRs and determine where you perform well in meta descriptions and title tags. Then, adjust the rest of the pages accordingly.
2. Can SEO Maximize PPC Campaigns in Digital Marketing?
Yes, SEO (unpaid) and paid marketing strategies work well together. PPC campaigns will help your site appear at the top of the paid search results while SEO promotes the same thing but organically. When you have both results n the top of the search engine results, it will boost your brand’s credibility to show you are not just throwing money to get the top spots.
Pay-per-click marketing campaigns use research to help in increasing your return on investment (ROI), and you should be aware that more people will recognize which SERP results are organic and which are ads. An example of how SEO efforts can maximize PPC campaigns is that a high-ranking page may perform better when used as part of PPC advertising, especially if the keyword has a low cost per click.
Jacky Chou is an electrical engineer turned marketer. He is the founder of Indexsy, Far & Away, Laurel & Wolf, a couple FBA businesses , and about 40 affiliate sites. He is a proud native of Vancouver, BC, who has been featured on Entrepreneur.com, Forbes, Oberlo and GoDaddy.