Imagine throwing an amazing party – but not inviting anyone to attend. Instead, random people just wander in. Maybe a few of your friends drop in by chance – but mostly your wonderful celebration goes by unnoticed.
It sounds crazy, right?
That’s what happens when you build a web site that’s not powered by Search Engine Optimization or SEO. Often misunderstood, SEO is a critical part of sound marketing strategy for any size business. SEO refers to any activity – usually strategic writing or the placement of relevant links – that attempts to improve the search engine rankings of your business – making it more “findable” to potential customers.
Beyond providing your business with more qualified leads and customers, SEO has been shown to offer a better ROI than traditional forms of marketing like TV and print ads. This makes SEO especially cost-effective for small and mid-sized businesses.
Here are the top 5 reasons your business needs to adopt an SEO strategy:
SEO Drives Business Visibility and Branding
When people search for your products and services, you obviously want to appear as high in the search engine rankings as possible – and not just because you want them to click on your website. Sometimes it’s about appearances. In fact, there is a certain amount of value in simply appearing in the search results for terms directly related to your business. Consider this: most searchers conduct searches multiple times; they may visit different sites, edit their search terms, and further refine their terms.
Why does this matter? Because if you continually show in all these search results you’ll gain increasing mindshare with each potential customer. Chances are very good that they’ll eventually click through to your website, and since you continually displayed in all their search results, they’ll trust you more than the lower-ranked competition.
SEO Builds Your Credibility
In the minds of consumers, your ranking is a vote of confidence: “If Google says this business is relevant, it must be.” It might sound a bit overstated, but think back to when the yellow pages reigned supreme. If you were looking for an electrician, did you have more confidence in the guy on the last page of the listings, or the first? For most people, high search rankings equal credibility – and most logical to start searching on page one.
SEO Brings Your Business Traffic
SEO is the difference between setting up shop on a secluded island or in midtown Manhattan. You’ll need to need to make your best effort to sell to your customers either way, but obviously you’ll get way more traffic in Manhattan. More importantly, the people coming to your site are almost all qualified leads – they were searching for businesses like yours when they found you – SEO is simply the matchmaker that brought you together.
SEO Offers Better ROI Than All Other Forms of Advertising
SEO surpasses virtually all forms of traditional advertising. That’s because SEO is an inbound marketing strategy; that means that allows you to market to people when they are looking for the products and services your business provides. You don’t have to interrupt their favorite TV show, or online news article or take up space on a page where they are reading a news article. You just show up when they are looking for businesses like yours. They already know they need your product or service; all you have to do is convince them to you’re the best provider to meet their needs.
SEO Offers Customer Intelligence and Insight
SEO generates valuable traffic, which is measurable by Google Analytics. This data and metrics are valuable because they give you important information about your customers: how they search, how they browse, the language they use, the technology they use, the region they live in, the days and times they are most active. This data is extremely valuable because it can help you make more informed decisions regarding your business strategies.