Search Engine Optimization (SEO) should be a significant tool in your marketing arsenal. When looking at your overall marketing plan, you need to take the time to think about which strategies you will lean towards. You should have a comprehensive marketing plan that includes advertising, content marketing, social media marketing, etc. Still, when it comes to your budget and energy, you need to know where yours is best spent. To that end, search engine optimization is worth a particular degree of attention.
Here, we’ll look at why you might want to consider SEO with particular attention by exploring some of its benefits.
What is SEO
First of all, we need to address SEO quickly. As the name suggests, search engine optimization is a discipline of techniques that optimize your website for search engines such as Google. The main aim is to help Google index and display your website in a place of prominence, usually close to the top spot in the SERP (search engine results pages). To do this, several techniques can be used, such as technical SEO to help your site run better, keyword research to make sure that your site uses the kind of language that your consumers are likely to use in their search queries, and content creation/optimization to help specific pages perform well in SERPs.
SEO Brings in More Customers
No matter what stats you look at, you will typically find that at least half of all online customers find a business’s website through organic search, meaning that they’re using Google and then clicking on whatever results it promotes. Similarly, many marketing professionals will attest that it also brings the highest quality leads. Getting your website to the first page of Google will bring more eyeballs to your site, leading to more clicks and, thus, more potential conversions to help your business grow.
SEO is Cost-Effective
You want to ensure that your efforts are worth the money you’re putting into them. Now, as with every kind of professional online marketing, the price of services can vary significantly from agency to agency. You want to ensure that you’re able to fit the SEO cost in your budget, which can mean being picky with your agencies.
However, overall, SEO is less expensive than direct advertising because you’re not paying for ad space and bids as you would usually, nor are you paying for the place your business has on the SERP. You’re paying solely for the services provided by the agency using it to help your business. The effects of SEO also tend to last longer than direct marketing, so it’s more cost-effective.
SEO Builds Brand Trust
Every business owner should be aware of long-term marketing goals. Beyond getting clicks, conversions, or customers, you should also consider how to build your brand in the long term. One of the best ways to promote your brand is to build trust. To some degree, people who use search engines like Google trust that those search engines can return reliable websites that are relevant to their interests. If your site is at the top of those results, it does come away with some of the legitimacy that people assume Google to have.
SEO Works With Advertising
If you’re looking for a comprehensive marketing approach, combining organic methods like SEO with direct marketing like advertising is likely to be the start. However, organic marketing can benefit your advertising, mainly if you use PPC (or pay-per-click advertising) on the same platforms. If you’re seeking clicks, you will improve your chances of having your website on the same SERP twice, which confers twice the legitimacy. As such, if you’re running a PPC campaign, you might want to focus your SEO efforts on relevant pages to heighten its impact even further.
Target Your Entire Customer Base
SEO can target all your customers, regardless of their demographics or where they fall along the marketing funnel. This is thanks to your ability to create marketing content specific to different audiences.
As such, you can create content designed to build initial interest in your services or products for those at the top of the funnel, then more specific content that looks at the benefits of your products and services for those closer to the point of conversion. You don’t need to miss any of your customers with SEO.
SEO Helps You Stay Competitive
Most importantly, SEO helps you stay competitive by ensuring that your business stands out against the others in the industry. It does this by leveraging one of the most widely-used sites on the internet to promote your site and raise it above the others. Of course, there is a possibility that your competitors are going to be using SEO, too. A good firm will find that and find the ways that you compete with them, not just directly vying for placements with specific keywords, but by finding keywords and niches that your competitors aren’t hitting and making sure that you’re getting the attention that they might be leaving on the table.
Of course, the marketing techniques you invest in largely depend on your business, its needs, and how likely you are to reach and convert the most people. For businesses operating online, an SEO marketing agency is essential. Hopefully, the benefits above show that.
