In the age of Google and online searches, simply having a website is not enough.
Just because you have a website, how are people going to find it? To make your website effective and worthwhile, a strong SEO strategy is a necessity.
At a high level, SEO, or search engine optimization, is the way of managing the visibility of a website on a search engine’s results page. The goal of SEO is to increase search visibility, which in turn will increase site traffic.
Here’s how it works.
Google ranks sites based on a combination of two categories: relevancy and authority. Relevancy is how close the content of a page meets a user’s needs and expectations. For example, imagine you searched for “women’s boots” on Google. The search results that appear have been optimized for the term “women’s boots” – making them relevant for Google to pull onto the results page. Authority is a measure of how trustworthy or authoritative the source of the content is. Certain tactics, including on-site optimization, ongoing content marketing, and off-site optimization help with this.
So, if you have a strong strategy for incorporating relevant keywords in your website, you have a higher likelihood of being relevant on Google searches. As a result, it drives higher engagement, sales, and much more.
SEO is one of the only marketing methods that allows you to generate high volumes of traffic and attract qualified leads to your website for a minimal investment. The investment that you allot for SEO will help take your business a long way with increased traffic leading to more revenue generation.
SEO helps people become aware of your brand and grows the visibility of your website online. With a targeted keyword list and fresh content strategy, when prospects search for specific keywords that you have optimized for, they will see your brand. Not to mention, SEO is 24/7. Once you rank high in search engines, your brand is promoted while your company sleeps.
Optimizing a website is essentially free unless you boost ads through PPC. The only investment in SEO is the time of an individual or team – whether you choose to outsource to a marketing agency or hire an internal marketing team.
According to recent studies, 81% of shoppers conduct online research before buying a product or service. By optimizing for specific keywords based on your product offering, potential consumers will see your brand name before even entering a store or deciding which brand to purchase from online. This enhances your sales and either sets you apart from your competitors who don’t take advantage of SEO or levels the playing field with those who do. Meaning, you won’t be overlooked when people search for your products.
If you own a small company, you may find that it’s hard to compete with the big dogs when it comes to advertising. A strategic SEO plan is your exception. While large brands may spend millions of dollars on advertising, an effective SEO strategy will help you gain higher rankings and go in the back door to acquire customers without spending an extreme amount.
SEO provides an easy way to pre-qualify your brand and present authority to prospects. If you are on the first page of Google, potential customers will immediately see you as an authority in your space and will have fewer hesitations about giving you their email or credit card information.
Traffic generated organically has a high likelihood of converting. Why is this? Because those that click through to your website are searching for a problem that you solve. Better yet, they are already interested in your products and services. You can “pull” traffic to your business without having to “push” out advertisements to persuade people to buy.