In short, SEO is crucial because it makes your website more visible, and that means more traffic and more opportunities to convert prospects into customers. In a nutshell, your business needs SEO because organic traffic is inarguably the most prominent source of traffic for a website and a search engine optimisation campaign can be most cost effective too. SEO plays an important role in this research and buying cycle. It’s like a prospect magnet, attracting potential buyers to your website through how they find you for the products or service that you do happen to need and seek.
SEO helps businesses to find new customers and promote their brand on top pages of search engines that make easy for users to find your brand. The goal of SEO optimisation is to increase your site’s rankings in search results. But beyond that, the purpose of it can be to let you gain a more credible footing in the market and bigger and better market share too.
SEO is a means of marketing that is achieved on merit
One of the biggest advantages of SEO is that it doesn’t involve paying for ad space. Consider how traditional ad campaigns operate. You determine a location you want your brand to appear, whether that’s on a particular TV channel or radio station, or in the pages of a magazine or newspaper. Then, you pay the company that owns that media for placement. You might pay for your ad to run for a certain length of time, or within a certain number of issues. As soon as that period is up, your ad stops appearing — and stops generating results for your business. Now, consider the various pages that appear in search engine results.
You can really up your credibility
The Internet has drastically changed what the sales process looks like for many businesses. That’s because today, consumers have access to a wealth of helpful resources that can help them learn about their options before they speak with a sales representative. And with SEO optimisation, you can become part of that learning process. That’s especially true if you combine your SEO efforts with content marketing. When you create informative, valuable content, you have the opportunity to build trust and credibility with potential customers early in the research phase.
Organic search – it is the number 1 means of traffic to any website
Organic search is a massive part of most businesses’ website performance and a critical component of the buyer funnel and ultimately getting users to complete a conversion or engagement. As marketers know, Google owns a significantly larger portion of the search market than competitors like Yahoo, Bing, Baidu, Yandex, DuckDuckGo, and many, many others. That’s not to say that all search engines don’t contribute to a brand’s visibility – they do.
It’s just that Google owns a considerable portion of the overall search market. Nevertheless, it’s a clear-cut leader, and thus its guidelines are important to follow. But the remaining part of the market owned by other engines is valuable to brands, too. This is especially true for brands in niche verticals where voice, visual and vertical search engines play an essential role.
The role of Google
Google, being the most visited website in the world (and specifically in the United States), also happens to be the most popular email provider globally with more than 1 billion users. YouTube is the second biggest search engine and over 2 billion people access it at least once a month. We know that a clear majority of the world with access to the internet is visiting Google at least once a day to get information. Being highly visible as a trusted resource by Google and other search engines will always work in a brand’s favor. Quality SEO and a high-quality website take brands there.
SEO can work wonders from a UX point of view
User experience has become every marketer’s number one priority. Everyone wants better organic rankings and maximum visibility. However, few realize that optimal user experience is a big part of getting there. Google has learned how to interpret a good or unfavorable user experience, and a positive user experience has become a pivotal element to a website’s success. Google’s Page Experience Update is something that marketers in all industries will need to adhere to and is part of their longstanding focus on the customer experience.
Customers know what they want. If they can’t find it, there’s going to be a problem. And performance will suffer. A clear example of building a solid user experience is how Google has become more of an answer engine. It now offers the sought-after data directly on the SERPs (search engine results pages). The intention is to offer users the information they are looking for in fewer clicks, quickly and easily. Quality SEO incorporates a positive user experience, leveraging it to work in a brand’s favour.
SEO can be a vital part of any businesses marketing mix
It is very clear as to the importance of SEO for marketing any business. SEO is the master when it comes to pulling in prospects, and can help boost conversions too. But I also believe that SEO is not the only game in town! SEO alone cannot help you reach your highest marketing potential. Social media, branding and other marketing strategies segue into and complement SEO. The combination strengthening and reinforcing each element to grow your business exponentially faster.
As a manager or CEO then, your challenge isn’t about picking one over another. But how best to intelligently integrate SEO into your marketing mix to reap rich rewards. And that’s why this isn’t a ‘battle between marketers’. This is with specialists in each branch trying to out-sell the other to their clients. But rather an opportunity for collaboration and partnership in leading a business manager or CEO. This is all towards the right mix of marketing services. These include SEO – that will bring the highest cumulative benefit. Instead of always “giving customers what they want”, it’s time to face the fact that, often, clients do not know how to select from the diverse options at their disposal.
It is vital that this service is sold in a straightforward manner
As professionals, marketers and SEO consultants must not be dismissive or misleading about other specialties than their own. But instead help clients build the right foundation, mix and plan. They must then guide them to effectively implement and manage the most cost effective, high-return strategies. Also of tactics that are aligned with their overall business goals. A part of the responsibility professional marketers share is to steer clients away from danger. Or stop them from embracing populist tactics that will actually turn out to be a quagmire. These are ones in which their business gets stuck, or quicksand into which it gradually sinks without a trace. Some might even frown at your desire to step outside your scope and field of expertise.
But for small and medium businesses and start ups, by adopting such an advisory/consultative role and offering professional advice, reaching out a helping hand to offer “business development” advice, and showing rock-solid proof to back up your offerings, prices and advice, you can go a long way in building trust. At that point, clients will be willing to follow you, even when you suggest an approach that points in another direction than what they believed would be the right choice. It bears to always keep in mind that clients are buying a consultant’s expertise only because they don’t have it themselves, and therefore they are (logically) unable to ask for the “perfect offer”. Selling them whatever they ask for is often not in their best interests. And this is just as true for big brands with internal staff as it is for smaller businesses.
Overall
How? SEO is not a cost. It’s an investment. And even if the highest priced SEO company charges you twice as much as the rest, as a marketing manager or decision maker, you should look deeper into why they are so expensive. What makes them so confident as to pitch you with an offer others would toss into the dust-bin without a second thought? You need to look at SEO for the ways it can help your business stand out to others.
