Someone sees you in a magazine, or you get mentioned by one of their friends. What’s the first thing they do? They Google you, your brand and/or your business name. Are you there prominently shouting loudly and proudly about what you do, or are you on page 27, never to be found?
1 – SEO brings you more website traffic
Most online searches start with a search engine, whether it’s Google or Bing. People will either head to their browser on their desktop or phone and search for answers to their question or query.
When someone is actively looking for a solution to their problem, this is the best time to draw them into your website, show off who you are and how you can help them. If you’re nowhere near page one for the keyword term they’re searching for, then they’re probably going to visit, read about, and choose one of your competitors.
Ranking well in Google can bring you many different visitors, and if you’ve probably optimised your landing pages, it should bring you lots of leads (prospects) too.
2 – SEO brings in high-quality leads
If you’re running ads (pay-per-click advertising) on Google or Facebook/Instagram, or in fact anywhere online, then you’re interrupting a person’s online experience. The advert is popping up during their normal experience, just as adverts come on the TV when you’re watching one of your favourite programmes, or on YouTube when you’re catching up with one of your favourite channels.
This means the intent to find you and your product or service isn’t there: you’re pattern interrupting them and convincing them to take action. With SEO, all you need to do is to rank in the search engines and have an attractive title tag and meta description to encourage a reader to come visit your website and learn more about you.
3 – SEO builds long-term visibility
Online ads will run as long as you keep paying for them. You turn them off or reduce the budget spend, and they either disappear or merge into the other hundreds of ads being shown to your target market this week.
You will also find that as you progress with ads, you’ll need to change the visuals, maybe change the copy, and potentially increase your daily/monthly budget significantly. With SEO you don’t need to do that: as long as your SEO team or specialist keeps a low and steady momentum on brand mentions, links, and ensures all of the foundational technical SEO practicies have been aderred to on your business website, you’ll continue to rank for months and years to come, and Google et al. will continue to send you potential buyers.
4 – SEO strengthens your brand’s credibility
People trust the first page of Google. If your brand appears there for search terms that buyers are searching for, then you’re already over one hurdle. Over the years, Google has done a great job of shuffling the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) to ensure that only the best websites, pages and videos appear for its users.
This has a positive impact on how your brand is seen: if you’re ranking in the top few search results, then you’ll be seen as a brand that has it all together. If you’re a local business and ranking in both the maps pack and the organic results? That’s literally the best thing to do because you’re sending a subconscious signal to users that you’re everywhere for the search queries they’re typing in. That’s a win-win for trust in your brand.
5 – SEO improves user experience
There have been a lot of changes over the years since I entered full-time into SEO back in 2008. There have been numerous shake-ups in the algorithm and how you rank a page or website, and sometimes it felt like it wasn’t for the better (a page going from top 3 results for a keyword term to literally disappearing overnight because the website isn’t properly optimised).
The truth is that Google has kind of forced business owners to accept that they need their websites to perform better for users if they want the search engine to send them traffic. Website page speed has got so much better in recent years, and user experience on mobile devices, and accessibility options and optimisation have also become much better.
We can thank lots of those improvements to the different teams and elements inside improvements being pushed on SEOs and their clients by the search team engineers at Google. And the results? Happier users and happier potential buyers coming to visit to see if they want to buy from you.
6 – SEO helps you beat the competition
When you start, other companies (your competitors, most likely) will be ranking above you. Or, it could also be that no one who serves your market is ranking on Google: it’s a combination of articles, vloggers, or forums where people with your experience and expertise seem to be the best option for potential clients to visit, learn from, and make a purchase.
That means when you start ranking well, all of the attention from visitors (future customers/clients) comes to you and your business. If you plan things right, then you’ll be blowing the competition out of the water.
7 – SEO supports local business growth
Small, local businesses need SEO for their business and website because Google and Bing tailor search results in their favour. If your business serves customers or clients in the local vicinity, then you need to set up your Google Maps/Business Profile as well as your Bing Places profile.
Having both of these set up and then working on your NAP (Business Name, Address, and Phone Number) citations on lots of different websites out there will mean local SEO can have a massive impact on your bottom line, because you will be bringing in potential customers through the phone, email, and contact forms on your website. And the best thing? They’re eager and ready to buy what you have to offer.
8 – SEO maximises ROI from other forms of marketing
Having a strong SEO foundation and ensuring your website is accessible, mobile optimised, loads fast, and conforms to core vital fundamentals will mean your other marketing efforts benefit too.
In order to be ranked well in the results page of Google, your website needs to pass certain checks. This will then help your other marketing efforts, whether doing social media, paid ads or email marketing – you’ve optimised your website for search, so these efforts will help any other form of bringing visitors to your website by other methods.
9 – SEO provides measurable results
When you hire a professional to do SEO on your business website, they’ll be tracking keyword rankings and seeing where Google and Bing place you in the different search results pages for the keyword terms you want to target. Since you’re paying them a fee every month, you’re going to want to calculate the ROI: return on what you’re spending. And you should see an uptick in revenue.
SEO helps with this because most seasoned and professional search engine optimisation experts understand that after a baseline has been established, you need to track keywords, traffic, leads, and conversions. Having an SEO expert come in and do that can help you with smart, data-driven decisions.
10 – SEO is cost-effective
When compared to traditional offline advertising or even PPC (no matter the platform), over the long term, SEO is one of the most cost-effective solutions to bring traffic and potential buyers.
The great thing with it is that it can be treated as an asset that grows over time, rather than a cost. As long as you continue to water it occasionally once it’s blooming, it will continue to grow and produce the fruits you want.
