SEO, known as Search Engine Optimisation is an important and integral part of every business, that wants to make a mark and survive in the online world.
You all have heard about SEO. A lot of people even know how search engine algorithm and SEO strategies work.
When you know about SEO, you would also know its utilities. Most people only know the fact that SEO contributes to pushing up the search engine rankings of that particular website.
But that is not all about it.
There are so many more facets to SEO, that most people do not even know about.
Let us discuss those points that are not known to most people about why SEO is such an integral part of every business.
What is SEO?
SEO, or Search Engine Optimisation means a website continuously trying to optimize its pages according to the market competition and also following search engine norms.
By doing this, the websites that have maximum optimization of their pages, rank the highest in the search engine results for a particular search query.
When a website has identified its keywords and optimizes them in a page, Google and its spiders recognize that page as the most relevant and having contextual information in regards to certain search queries.
So Google pushes up the ranking of that website on its results page, so that users, can get the most relevant and useful information. This optimization of web pages is basically Search Engine Optimisation.
Why is SEO for Business Important?
Let us discuss in detail about every reason why SEO is absolutely important and unavoidable for every kind of business.
1. SEO boosts the visibility of your brand and hence increases brand awareness:
When your target audience and other potential customers search for the products or services that you offer, you obviously want to be at the topmost positions of the search engine result pages.
But the reason behind that is not just because you want them to visit your website and increase traffic.
There is a certain sense of achievement when your website appears in the search engine result pages for the words or phrases that are directly linked to your brand.
Here you have to understand the search patterns in which users enter their queries.
Most users type some words, then search for the relevant information by clicking on some of the websites, then they go back and make some changes in the search terms, search again and then click on the other websites and this goes on.
Ask yourself what this means for your brand and business. This means that you have chances to continuously appear in all the search results, every time the user edits his search terms and searches for something.
Every time you show up, you are getting deeper into the mind of the customer. After 2-3 times, the user will directly click on your site, since they will remember that they had seen your business at the top position of every search result that he was searching for.
This will not only increase the traffic to your site and increase your visibility, but it will also establish brand awareness among your users.
2. SEO brings credibility to your business:
When users are searching for something, they mentally take notes about the rankings in order for the search results that are displayed. They might not be doing it consciously, but it happens.
When users continuously see your brand at the top view positions every time when they search for something, they will notice that your brand has a continuously high rank.
This also makes Google believe that your business or brand is the most relevant.
Your users do not realize this but your consistent high ranks make you credible and trustworthy in their eyes.
3. SEO increases the traffic to your site:
A lot of people argue that just getting traffic will not get them any money. That is true.
But imagine this- if you had to set up a store, would you rather do it on a busy crowded street or far away on the islands?
Now, everybody who is working over on that busy street will not help you earn money. But some of those people will visit your store and might like your product and ultimately become your customer. That is exactly the case with SEO.
A lot of people who visit your website will eventually become your customers. That is because these people were searching for businesses like yours to purchase something and that is how they found your website. This is better described in the next point.
4. SEO has the highest return on investment:
The rewards of SEO for all the efforts you put in your business is much higher than other forms of advertising that you generally do offline.
That is because SEO is basically a marketing strategy that is inbound. This means that through SEO, you get to market your product or services to people when they are actually looking for it.
It is convenient for users also because you do not take up time or space in between their favorite TV shows or you don’t interrupt their reading space when they are reading the newspaper.
You show up and promote yourself only when they are looking for something that your company provides.
All you have to do is convince your users that your brand is the right place where they can get the desired product or service that they are looking for.
In simple words, SEO helps you win half the battle of the entire purchase process even before it starts.
5. It is absolutely important to have a healthy content profile:
Over the last few years, Google has made so many changes to its core algorithm that it has now started looking at websites in a different way.
A few years ago things were very simple and SEO was not such a multi-layered complicated process.
Things like social media indicators did not even exist a few years ago, but now they are fairly important as far as impacting your rankings are concerned.
When you do not have a healthy content profile that is slowly built over a period of a few months and years, it is bad for the health of your website.
A healthy content profile is one of the factors that Google evaluates while going to your website to decide its relevance and utility.
6. It gives you unparalleled insight into your customers:
As you already know by now, that SEO generates traffic for your website. This traffic is tracked by a great tool called Google Analytics.
It gives you the data and metrics about the amount and kind of traffic that is visiting your website at any given point of time.
This data is extremely important to you as a business owner because it gives you an insight into who your customers are and how they behave.
It gives you other important data like the:
- Search pattern of the customers
- The language they are using
- The device and Technology they are using
- How they are browsing
- Where do they live
- At which time of the day are the most active
- Which days of the week they more active etc.
This data is extremely important to you because it will help you to make proper, well researched and informed decisions about your business on the strategies you want to adopt online as well as offline.
7. Better branding:
Increased visibility of your business directly leads to the better brand name of the product or service you are selling.
When branding is high, it helps people recognize your product easily. So, what you have to do is that you need to do something through which you can get into the subconscious of your consumers, as that will increase your chances of getting leads.
But this would not be possible if you do not optimize the entire page.
As we already know, SEO helps people to get to know about your brand and be aware of it.
The more people know about your brand, the more easily they are going to depend on you. When a customer Googles something, he depends on the first page only.
So, invest all it takes to optimize your website to the fullest and as much as you can, without keyword stuffing.
8. It gives the necessary exposure to your brand:
SEO gives you a chance to expose your brand to the marketplace without having to invest a lot.
Imagine if you were trying to set up a store in a real market, how much would that cost you?
SEO minimizes that cost.
It gives you the desired exposure that your brand needs. You can use SEO to create a virtual image for your brand that your customers will swear by.
Not just that, it also widens your horizons for doing business among your competitors in the industry.
9. It is the most cost-effective way to market your brand:
You already know that SEO has the highest return on investment among the other forms of offline advertising. This cost-effectiveness of SEO makes it an important factor in the entire digital marketing process.
Moreover, it helps your business grow rapidly all through the organic traffic that it generates.
Like we said, setting up a store would mean a huge investment, first in buying the raw material, then taking space on lease, etc. SEO is a lesser investment than that and far more lead generating.
10. All your competitors are doing SEO:
Whatever industry or niche you are dealing with, all the competitors you have are definitely doing SEO.
You won’t really get to know about their individual strategies, but they are definitely doing it. If you want your business to grow in that competitive space, you have to invest in SEO.
Otherwise, your competitors will beat you and your website will get stagnant. That would mean death for your brand.
11. SEO is not going anywhere anytime soon:
SEO first came into play more than 20 years ago and since then it has only got stronger with time.
Even though SEO is going to continuously evolve with time, the basic requirements of relevant and useful content, optimized design and high-quality backlinks are always going to stay.
In fact, they are going to get even more important with time. If you want to keep up with the competition, you have to stay updated with the latest developments and changes in the industry.
Take notice of how well your competitors are doing and how they are getting new clients.
12. It is highly measurable:
SEO is one strategy that you can continuously measure and monitor, unlike most other traditional marketing campaigns.
Google Analytics is the wonder tool here, which lets you see the amount of traffic that comes to your site and how that traffic meets your internal goals organically.
You can also see which exact keywords are driving traffic using the Google Search Console. We have already established how valuable and important this data is for your business and further growth.
13. SEO brings down the cost of customer acquisition:
The traffic that you get from SEO is organic and is free. When you are able to receive your targeted traffic consistently, it will ultimately increase your lead conversion and sales. You are getting to achieve your goals virtually and without any cost.
This will obviously bring down the customer acquisition cost since you are getting to do it for free almost.
Wrapping Up:
Most of us had no idea that the uses of SEO for a website could be this huge.
Most of our SEO knowledge was limited to only getting organic traffic and improving the search engine page rankings.
After this article now you know what an indispensable part SEO for Business is when it comes to digital marketing. And it is only going to grow over time.