Search Engine Optimization is a set of tactics that help improve a website’s ranking on search engine results (SERPs) pages.
Marketers across niches argue that applying SEO tactics is far more effective than using PPC (Pay-Per-Click) advertising for driving traffic and sales.
The listings on the first page of SERPs drive a whopping 92% of the clicks, with the first listing alone receiving 33% of them.
Thus, being among the top-ranked search results is key to any website’s success, and proper SEO helps achieve that.
Some of the most effective SEO tactics are:
· Blogging and guest blogging
· Creating attractive landing pages
· Making your site mobile-friendly
· Improving site loading speed
Focusing resources on implementing SEO tactics is the right way to go since it is much more difficult to generate traffic from ad campaigns.
According to HubSpot, the average click-through rate for display ads across niches is just 0.35%!
In a nutshell, SEO improves your websites’ visibility on the web.
Here are Five More Ways in which Implementing Good SEO Practices helps Businesses:
#1 It Helps you Build your Brand
According to a study, 59% of consumers prefer to buy products from a brand they recognize, and 21% say they purchased the products because they liked the brand.
Therefore, building the brand to be recognizable is one of the most important things a business can do.
Although branding is considered to be a traditional marketing strategy, and search engine optimization a digital marketing strategy, both involve similar steps and produce similar results.
When building brands, businesses must consider the product image as well as the perspective and opinion of the public.
The factors are similar when we look at SEO. Content that aligns with the needs and the interests of the audience must be curated carefully.
It is easier to then market products cleverly midst quality content. Putting up great content is also a great way to generate links from other sites.
The overall content that you put up is a reflection of your image online.
Being mindful of this fact, especially as you design an SEO strategy will help you find the right ideas and keywords that will allow you to connect with your audience.
Finding these key elements enables any business to build their ideal brand and online presence.
Striking a nerve and resonating with your audience is just as important as helping your target audience find your content. This brings us to the next point.
#2 Helps you Find your Target Audience (and helps them find you!)
As reported in another study by HubSpot, 62% of consumers use search engines when they want to learn more about a business, and 41% use search engines when they’re ready to buy from the business.
Ideally, you want the business to be a part of the potential customers’ online research process. For this to happen, the business must show up on the first page of SERPs.
Good SEO helps your business get in front of your target audience as they look for relevant or related information.
Considering how often people use search engines (5.8 billion searches a day!), tapping into these searches by improving your SERPs ranking can result in considerable boosts to business.
Furthermore, being ranked as a top result gives your business a massive advantage over competitors, since top results are clicked more often.
Additionally, the same study by HubSpot also states that a whopping 48% of search engine users prefer to visit the business’s official website to learn more about them and the products they have to offer.
Having a powerful online presence will not just help accomplish marketing goals, but will also enable your target audience to learn more about the business.
#3 It Helps Establish Authority and Credibility
The internet has not just changed the way businesses operate; it has also changed the way consumers purchase goods.
The average consumer now feels empowered with information, since they have a database of information about products and their best prices handy at all times so they can get the best deal.
According to a 2014 study by Accenture:
“Overall, 94 percent of B2B buyers report that they conduct some form of online research before purchasing a business product. Fifty-five percent of B2B buyers conduct online research for at least half of their corporate purchases.”
The consumer wishes to learn all they can about what they’re about to purchase, and with SEO, the business can be a part of this learning process. With link building on relevant and authority sites, you can increase the domain authority of your blog easily.
When you curate high-quality content designed to be as informative and helpful as possible, you have an opportunity to gain the trust of a potential customer and establish credibility early on. You become the trusted guide in your customers’ journeys.
Here’s how it works:
First, a user finds your site as they search for information related to the industry your business belongs to, the sector itself, or a product that you sell.
Next, they read the resource that they have found. If it is helpful, they subscribe to your email list and share the resource with their friends.
Over the next few weeks or months, this user will keep returning to your site several times and read your email content regularly. They may not take any action, which can be frustrating.
However, with each piece of content that they consume, the business will have established more and more credibility in the readers’ minds.
Finally, when the time is right for them, they will be ready to make a purchase or avail of your service, all thanks to the useful information that you provided them with consistently, free of cost.
Becoming a credible source of information takes a lot of time and effort. However, once your website is deemed reliable, the business is bound to gain momentum and grow exponentially.
#4 No More Unnecessary Advertising Expenditure
As mentioned previously, investing in SEO to generate organic traffic is far more effective than spending on advertising.
Furthermore, the return on investment of SEO is far higher than that of advertising. Never think of resources spent on SEO as marketing costs. Think of it as a business investment, since it is bound to pay off for years to come.
On the other hand, the effects of paid online advertisements are most likely over just as the link is clicked.
Instead of paying an advertisement firm to give your business the top search spot temporarily, it is much more practical to spend the same amount to improve your ranking on SERPs.
Sure, the paid-for top spot gets more clicks. However, using SEO will give you the top spot for the long term. Moreover, being on top without the sponsored sign will establish you in a different authoritative league altogether.
#5 It Improves User Experience
According to a report by Forrester, better user experience can lead to up to a 400% increase in conversions.
The ultimate goal of every search engine is always to provide the highest quality and most relevant content for its users.
Consequently, the search engines are maintained to direct their users to sites that not only have the best content but also supply the best user experience.
User experience is an umbrella term that encapsulates a website’s qualities – things like the sites’ mobile-friendliness, loading speed, and usability. All of these qualities play a huge role in determining a website’s ranking on SERPs.
Designing your website to give the user a better experience has a significant impact on both your rankings and your conversion rates.
Another good reason to consider optimizing your site for search engines is that the results are easy to measure.
Unlike other methods of boosting traffic and sales, the effects of SEO can be measured directly by using powerful tools like Google Analytics and Kissmetrics.
These tools enable you to monitor the website’s overall traffic, conversions, and all kinds of metrics that help you improve your business’s marketing approach.
They enable you to evaluate your current approach, figure out what went wrong, and confidently improve your path in the next iteration. It is an excellent way of getting feedback, refining your SEO strategy, and iteratively meeting your goals.
In general, SEO works so well since it helps improve the overall quality of your site. Applying SEO techniques correctly ensures that your website has more, better quality content, and it loads faster to adds real value to the visitors’ experience every time they visit.
Being one of the top results is super important since the chances of your site being noticed go down drastically, the lower you show up on that list.
Consequently, spending on SEO is expected to rise to $80billion a year by 2020,according to Forbes.
As the market becomes more and more competitive, now is the right time for businesses, regardless of niche, to begin to focus on optimizing their websites for search engines.
The higher you rank, the better your business performs!
Aspects of Search Engine Optimization:
Aspects of Search Engine Optimizations is used to increase the visibility and ranking of the website. Here is a quick overview of these aspects that you need to use in the correct style to facilitate an effective SEO process.
- Keyword Optimization: Keywords play an important role in search engine optimization. It is used to target to drive traffic from search engines to websites. Keywords are the terms that you write in your content to match the keywords that your audience uses in searches. In order to make it easy for them to find your website, you need to know need to add the relevant keywords in the web content. Make sure to mention keywords in your H1 tags, but also in the body of the content. But, don’t oversaturate your content with the keywords because Google is smarter than you. Not bothering to update the keywords from time to time in your content and always add the keywords that are too popular. You find the keywords that are relevant to your content; you can also use keywords research tools.
- Mobile optimization: In today’s world, people search from mobile more than desktops. So, it is very important to design website mobile-friendly. The interface of the website must be adjustable that easily adjust as per the users’ screens and load in a blink of an eye. SEO is not all about keyword research or meta tags; your website features and functionality also pay an important in the search engine optimization. According to the Google algorithm, the websites are not mobile-optimized will going to be hurt in the ranking. So, it is necessary to have a responsive mobile website too.
- Sitemap: In sitemap, all-important websites are available with data and updated information of the page. The search engine will crawl the site maps on the basis of the priority.
- Internal linking: In SEO, the thing that easily boosts the ranking of the website is an internal linking. It is a hyperlink that points to the same domain. One of the significant advantages of internal linking is that it provides your audience with further reading options. Furthermore, it helps Google to crawl the site.
- External linking: There are many aspects that need to be considered in the SEO, and an external linking is one of them. External linking is the process of adding authentic and trustworthy websites to your pages that improve the credibility of the website. One of the significant advantages of linking external links to your web pages is that it improves the authority of the website, by providing viewers references.
- Content: In SEO, that thing that takes your website on the first page of Google is the content. It must be well-researched, unique, high in quality and SEO based. If you write easy to understand products descriptions, it will definitely catch the users’ attention and encourage them to share on other platforms. That’s how your brand visibility will increase and ROI as well.
