Search Engine Optimization (SEO) helps ensure that your website appears at the top of search engine results, so that people can find your business easily when searching online. Search engines like google use algorithms to determine which sites get listed at the top of the search in search rankings. Fortunately, these changes don’t have to be drastic or expensive.
What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?
An important component of every successful online marketing strategy, SEO is used to enhance your site’s visibility in search results. But why is it considered as such an important tool? Because most consumers begin their product searches online; when these potential customers don’t find you there, they will look elsewhere. And if they don’t find you online at all, there’s a fair chance, they will go out of their way to avoid buying from you in person. So, irrespective of the size of your business, even if only part of your sales come through online channels, you want them coming through search engines. And that means investing in SEO is one expense that should never be cut. When done right, SEO improves changes for both local listings and websites by helping businesses rank higher in popular search engines. Consumers are looking for products, services, places etc. all the time, and you want to make sure they see yours first. When someone makes a purchase decision based on what they see on Google or any other search engine results, their action represents an investment of money (and sometimes time). That investment comes with significant expectations around convenience and trustworthiness, and those high standards are largely influenced by which sites are ranked highest for specific searches. This process helps ensure that consumers receive accurate information based on exactly what they’re looking for, which includes competitive price comparisons, saving time and money.
What are the benefits of SEO?
If you want your website to make you any money, you need to invest in SEO. There are numerous ways in which, investing in SEO will benefit your business.
It’s free – before we get into how good SEO is for business, we should also point out that it’s also free. You don’t have to pay anything for good quality words or links, which means that your return on investment (ROI) is extremely high. Of course, there is some work involved, if you want to rank well with Google or Bing or whatever search engines that will send traffic your way, but most of those jobs only take up a few hours per week.
Greater freedom to expand products/services – the freedom afforded by search engines like Google gives businesses endless possibilities for expansion. Consumers who find you through keywords might not be able to afford your products/services right now, but once they find you, they can always come back later. By having an active presence on search engines (and using them correctly), you increase your chances of growing alongside (or ahead of) consumers who come looking for exactly what you provide.
Good marketing – Marketing is an essential part of any company’s strategy for success. No matter how you define marketing, you need customers in order for your business to thrive. And that means there must be some process in place that would drive people who aren’t already customers towards your business, rather than them going elsewhere. That’s where SEO comes into play: optimizing your website so that it ranks higher in search engines, helps ensure that those consumers find you on their own instead of some other company.
Grow brand awareness – A brand’s identity depends on its ability to appear consistently across different media channels; social media networks like Facebook and Twitter function as effective promotional tools as consumers take their values from one medium to another through shared friends, likes, views and followers.
The tricky thing about SEO is that its results are largely invisible, meaning they don’t show up quickly or immediately. So, investing in SEO can seem expensive initially, because you won’t see results overnight. The good news is once you make it work for your business, it typically requires little maintenance thereafter. In fact, many companies employ full-time specialists whose jobs are dedicated entirely to the upkeep and maintaining their businesses’ high rankings across search engines.
Why invest in SEO?
SEO is an incredibly valuable promotional tool for most businesses. There are many specific reasons why investing in good SEO is important for these businesses, but most boil down to a simple fact: people don’t think like search engines do. Many customers that come into contact with your company will find you through online searches done on popular search engines like Google or Bing. They’ll type in specific keywords related to your products or services. If you want more people coming into contact with your company, optimizing your website for these keywords will help make that happen. Additionally, building backlinks (connections between different websites) is crucial if you want high rankings on all major search engines. When people read about your brand on another site, linking to your website makes that positive impression even stronger. Any business that wants its name out there should invest at least some time into solid SEO practices.
How does an effective strategy look like for a business to maximize their ROI on SEO marketing efforts?
The key to effective SEO marketing is finding balance. Every business will be different, but most brands will find that they need to invest in high quality content, thoughtful link building strategies, social media promotion and more. But be careful, in an attempt to drive more traffic, many businesses end up going overboard on one part of their strategy or another. Instead, aim for a healthy balance between all these aspects. If you’re building out a robust website that includes useful content with regular updates and quality backlinks from reputable sources, you’re well on your way towards mastering your ROI with your SEO marketing efforts. You may also want to target some profitable keywords as well, if your brand does have any physical presence in any areas where consumers might find you by searching for those keywords specifically.
Do we need an expert to make these changes or can we do them ourselves?
While there is always risk in making changes to your website, many changes are relatively easy to make. For example, changing meta tags or re-configuring site structure will likely not require an expert. In fact, you might find that SEO best practices often overlap with other areas of digital marketing such as content creation and social media. With that said, if you want more direct help from an expert in SEO, you can work with a professional. But before deciding on a course of action, it’s important to think about your goals and figure out where you stand when it comes to paying for help. Are you ready to put some money into your project? Or would you rather try to perform all these tasks yourself without any budget set aside? It’s always smart to weigh these decisions carefully, when assessing in whether or not investing in an expert makes sense.
