SEO and the Bottom Line: Why SEO is Essential for Business
| 2060 DigitalIf you’re tossing around the idea of boosting your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts, you may be wondering if it’s really worth it. Building SEO takes some time and effort you may not be able to give at the moment. Plus, you need results now. While there are methods you can use to immediately increase your website traffic and sales, most marketers agree that SEO is one of the best ways to garner a consistent stream of new leads and customers. Below are five reasons why SEO is absolutely essential for your business.
1. SEO improves your online visibility.
Every single day, there are people searching for the types of products and services that your business has to offer, but do they know that you exist? Without a prominent position in the search engine results, your business will basically be invisible to the online audience you’re trying to reach.
Having a website is an excellent step toward gaining greater market share online, but your website needs to rank well in the search engine results in order for your business to get the type of exposure you’re looking for.
2. SEO brings traffic to your website.
The amount of people who use search engines every day is absolutely staggering; in fact, Google alone processes over 138 million searches every hour! When you’ve developed a prominent search engine ranking through SEO, a good portion of people who search for the terms that relate to your business will click on your website when the search results appear.
When done right, SEO can bring a virtually endless stream of traffic to your website. You have to remember that people are searching for things online day in and day out; it’s just a matter of whether or not your website will be there to catch their eye when they’re searching.
3. SEO can aid in your branding efforts.
A high search engine ranking (e.g., somewhere toward the top of the first page of the search results) is important for branding purposes as well. If your website continually shows up high in results for all kinds of keyword terms that relate to your business, you’re marrying your business with a certain idea in people’s minds.
Many people perform multiple searches, changing one or two words each time to get what they’re after when they use a search engine; when they see your site constantly popping up in their search results, you have a better chance of getting their attention due to the increased mind share that a high search engine ranking provides.
4. SEO lends credibility to your business.
To most people, a high search engine ranking is a sign of credibility. The general mindset of the average online searcher (whether it’s a conscious thought or not) is that they trust the results that Google is delivering to them. They look at the websites listed on the search engine results pages as the ones that Google considers to be the most relevant to their search, so it lends a certain degree of instant credibility to your business.
5. SEO has a fantastic ROI.
While SEO does require a significant investment of time and effort, it has one of the most fantastic ROIs of any form of online marketing. One of the main reasons for this is that SEO is an inbound marketing technique, which means that your website visitors are already interested in what you have to offer.
Think about it: They were searching for something specific, they used a search engine to help them find it, and as a result of their search, they ended up on your website. This basically means that you’re receiving pre-qualified traffic, which has a much higher likelihood of producing sales and conversions.