12 Reasons Your Business Needs Search Engine Optimization
Many businesses and brands know—or at least believe that they know—that they need search engine optimization (SEO) for their online properties and the advantages that will be realized from implementing SEO.
SEO has the ability to enhance the visibility and searchability of your website, but is there any other value to SEO? Why is it so important?
The following 12 reasons will provide some clarity on why SEO is so incredibly important for businesses, regardless of what industry or even the size of your business.
1. The Main Source of Web Traffic Tends to Be Organic Search
A huge part of website performance is organic search, and it is also an important part of the buyer’s funnel and getting individuals to complete engagement or conversion.
As marketers are well aware, Google is the owner of a dramatically larger portion of the search market than its competition such as Bing, Yahoo, Yandex, Baidu, DuckDuckGo, etc.
This doesn’t mean that all search engines can’t contribute significantly to the visibility of a brand—because they definitely do—but with Google owning roughly 75 percent of the search market, it is the leader and its guidelines need to be followed. Of course, the other 25 percent that is owned by other search engines can prove to be valuable to businesses and brands as well.
While Google is the most visited site worldwide (particularly here in the U.S.), it is also the most popular provider of e-mail across the globe with over one billion users. YouTube is the second largest search engine.
We realize that the bulk majority of the world has internet access is getting on Google once per day to obtain information that they need. Therefore, it is critical that you make yourself highly visible and a trusted resource by Google and other search engines. A high-quality website and quality SEO is what is going to get your brand there.
2. SEO Helps to Build Credibility and Trust
With any knowledgeable SEO, the main objective is to create a solid foundation for a great website with an effective user experience that can be discovered in search easily thanks to the credibility and trust of the brand and its online properties.
There are numerous elements that are used for the establishment of authority regarding Google and other search engines. Aside from the aforementioned factors, authority is accumulated over time thanks to elements like the following:
- Positive user behavior
- Quality backlink profiles
- Optimized on-page content and elements
- Machine-learning signals
Demonstrating that authority, though, will do more for a brand than most other types of online optimizations. The issue lies in the impossibility to build credibility and trust overnight. Authority must be earned and built over a period of time.
Establishing a brand or business as an authority takes effort, patience, and commitment, but it also relies on offering a quality and valuable service or products that will allow customers to put their trust into a brand.
3. Quality SEO Equates to an Enhanced User Experience
Maximum visibility and organic rankings are what everyone wants, but not very many people realize that it is enhanced user experience that it is what is going to get them there.
Google learned a long time ago how to deduce between a positive and adverse user experience, and a favorable user experience is now an essential ingredient in the success of a website.
Customers are well aware of what it is that they want, and if they are unable to locate it, then there is going to an issue—and performance is going to suffer as a result.
An example of constructing a solid user experience is how the search engine giant has developed into the answer engine that it is today offering sought-after data direct on search engine results pages (SERPs) for online users.
The intention of the above is offering online users the data that they’re searching for in fewer clicks, easily and quickly.
Top-notch SEO will incorporate a favorable user experience, influencing it so that it works in the favor of the brand.
4. Local SEO Leas to Boosted Engagement, Traffic, and Conversions
With the rise of mobile traffic, local search has quickly become an essential part of the success of small- and medium-sized businesses. Local SEO aspires to optimize your online properties for a certain vicinity so that users are able to easily and quickly locate you, placing them one step closer to completing a transaction.
Local SEO tends to focus on specific cities, towns, regions, and sometimes states so that a viable medium can be established for the messaging of a brand on a local level. Professionals are able to do this by optimizing the company’s website and content—including local backlinks and citations—as well as relevant local listings to the brand’s business sector and location.
In order for enegagement ot be promoted locally, professionals must optimize the Knowloedge Graph panel, the GMB listing, and social media profiles of the brand—and this is just to begin with. It is also important to strongly emphasize Google user reviews, in addition to reviews on other review sites like Yelp, Angie’s List, Home Advisor, and others, depending on the brand’s industry.
5. SEO Directly Impacts the Buying Cycle
Customers make sure to perform their research, which is a huge advantage of the World Wide Web from the perspective of the buyer.
So, utilizing SEO tactics to get your message across for groundbreaking products/services, good deals, and the importance and dependability of what you are providing your customers can be the ultimate game changer. It can also without a doubt impact the overall buying cycle in a favorable way when it is done correctly.
Brands need to be visible in areas where users need them in order for a creditable connection to be created. Local SEO boosts that visibility and allows prospective customers to locate the answers and the businesses offering those answers.
6. SEO Best Practices Are Continuously Updated
It is fantastic to have the implementation of SEO tactics on a business’s website and across the brand’s online properties; however, if it is only short-term engagement (due to budget constraints or something similar) and the website is not re-evaluated regularly over time, then it will eventually reach a certain threshold where it will be unable to improve due to other obstacles.
With the evolving search world, thanks to Google, constant monitoring for changes is required in order to stay one step ahead of the competition at all times and also on Page 1 of the SERPs. So, monitoring for algorithm changes and being proactive is going to benefit the brands that take those measures.
Google makes thousands of changes to algorithms annually. If you fall too far behind, it can be virtually impossible to bounce back. SEO professionals can help ensure that this is completely avoided.
7. Understanding SEO Ensures You Comprehend the Web Environment
With the World Wide Web constantly changing as well, it can be difficult to stay on top of all the changes that are taking place. However, ensuring that you are up-to-date with all of the changes in terms of SEO means that you are current with any major changes that are occurring with search.
Being familiar with the Web environment, such as tactics being utilizing by local and comparable businesses as well as competitors, will always be helpful for brands.
8. SEO’s Relatively Inexpensive
While it is true that SEO is not free, you also have to consider the fact that nothing good is free, right?
However, when you look at the bigger picture, SEO is relatively inexpensive, and the end result will most likely be significant in terms of the benefit and bottom line for your brand.
It isn’t a marketing expense; instead, it is an investment in your business. Quality implementation of SEO has the ability to hold water for years into the future. Like most things in life, SEO only gets better with continuous attention and investment.
9. SEO Is a Long-Term Strategy
SEO typically has an obvious impact within the initial year of action being taken, and most of those actions have an impact that can last for over several years.
With the evolving market, it is important to follow the changes and trends as closely as possible. Even with a website that hasn’t had an abundant amount of strong suggestions of SEO implemented can progress from basic SEO best practices being implemented on an honest site with a respectable user experience.
Plus, the more effort, time, and budget of SEO that is committed to the website, the better and longer the site stands to becoming a creditable contender in its particular market.
10. SEO Is Quantifiable
Though it is true that SEO does not offer an easy-to-calculate return on investment (ROI) like paid search, it is possible for anything to be measured with adequate tracking and analytics.
The main issue with is attempting to connect the dots on the back end due to the fact that there isn’t a clear-cut way to comprehend the correlation between all taken actions. However, it is still worth it to fully understand how specific actions are meant to impact growth and performance—and hopefully they do.
Any worthy SEO professional will be intent on making those improvements; therefore, connecting those dots shouldn’t be a significant challenge.
Brands are also interested in knowing and understand where there are and where they are going regarding digital performance, particularly for SEO when they have a company or person that they are paying to execute it on their behalf.
And, in the end, there isn’t a better way to show SEO success—data doesn’t lie, ever.
11. SEO Shows New Opportunities
When it comes to high-quality SEO, it has the capability of finding a way to discover and leverage new opportunities for brands to be discovered and shine.
When quality SEO can be offered to brands, it means that an SEO team should be submersed into everything that makes that brand. It is truly the only way to market that brand with the understanding and passion that the brand’s stakeholders actually have for it—by becoming a stakeholder as well in a sense.
The better that a brand can be understood, the more opportunities that can be available for it to thrive. The same is true with SEO.
12. You Aren’t Winning the Click If You Aren’t on the First Page
It is definitely no secret in the SEO world that if you aren’t on the first page that you aren’t winning the organic search game.
One study has shown that the first three ranking positions in organic search lead to 40 percent of click-throughs, while as much as 30 percent of results from Page 1 and 2 don’t ever get clicked.
What does this mean for you and your brand? It ultimately means two things:
- You need to be one Page 1 if you aren’t already.
- There are too many cases when someone types in a query and are unable to find what they are looking for.
Conclusion
It is always going to be advantageous for a brand and its corresponding marketing efforts to implement quality SEO on a brand’s site and online properties. It may be considered an ultramodern marketing practice, but it is vital to the web presence of a brand today, particularly as rivaling competition and available data consistently increase and grow.
