Search engine optimisation (SEO) is an often quoted but frequently misunderstood term. It’s often mistakenly dismissed as being some sort of unfathomable pseudoscience, and so some businesses are failing to take advantage of the many business benefits of SEO. These can include increased brand visibility, enhanced credibility and improved levels of traffic to your website. In this article we put forward five reasons as to why your business should consider SEO as part of an overall marketing strategy.
Increased brand visibility
Most searchers when using a search engine to look for a service or product don’t just simply search once, click on some websites and be done with it. The reality is that most searchers edit and refine their search terms and click on a number of websites before further honing their search terms and searching again. As a business, you don’t just want to be at the top of the search results for one of those searches; ideally your business should be near the top for all related searches. By continually featuring in these search results, your business will be gaining more and more mindshare with each potential customer. The chances will then be very good that they will eventually click through to your website.
Enhanced credibility
Continually showing up in search results will also help to improve a potential customer’s level of trust in your brand. Subconsciously, searchers make mental notes of the rankings when they search on Google or other search engines. High search rankings will make you more credible in their eyes and act as a vote of confidence.
Improved levels of website traffic
Increased levels of traffic to your website by itself will not make you money. By the law of averages, however, the more potential customers you have visiting your website, the more conversions you will make. You will still need to make your best efforts once they are on your website, but the chances are that improved levels of traffic will in turn positively impact on your conversion rate.
Return on investment
It’s a fact that SEO will reward your business for its efforts at a higher rate than more traditional forms of advertising. That’s because it’s an inbound form of marketing: you are marketing to people when they are looking for the products and services that your business provides. In other words you are not convincing them that they need your product or service; you just have to convince them that your offering is better than any others in the marketplace. And so with SEO half the battle is won before it’s even started.
Customer insight
The final reason why your business should include SEO in its marketing strategy is because of the insights it will provide into the habits and activities of your customers. Google Analytics, along with similar search engine traffic analysis tools, provide detailed and valuable information on potential customers: how they search, how they browse, where they live, as well as the days and time that they are most active. This sort of detailed customer data, as well as being a free resource for businesses, will be invaluable in terms of helping you to make informed decisions about your business and its strategies.
So if you’re one of those people that thought SEO was a pseudoscience, then it may be time to rethink your approach and take advantage of the undeniable benefits SEO has to offer.