Search Engine Optimization (SEO) refers to the technique used to boost a website’s position on search engine results pages (SERPs) on sites like Google, Yahoo, or Bing. Developing an SEO strategy for your business enables a steady stream of potential customer traffic to your website allowing you to significantly increase your sales and revenue. The significance of SEO is often underplayed in business success but with the right strategy and implementation it can make a huge impact to your bottom line. However before diving into what approaches work best it’s first important to know that at the end of the day search engines, like Google, use metrics to rank organic search website placements.
SEO is a technical discipline that encompasses nearly every side of site-building and content development. If done effectively, it can create impressive ROI for the business, building brand strength and in turn perceived trust. Understanding the importance of SEO is critical in transforming a business’ ability to assist easily get in front of the right customers. The most common goal of SEO is to demonstrate your value to users and so in turn the search engines themselves. By improving your websites performance and usefulness to users, only then will pages start ranking for queries relevant to your content.
How Search Engine Optimization Works
Google ‘reads’ the content of websites available online using spiders through a process known as crawling. Crawling interprets key metadata and snippets of data that signal the relevancy of topics and overall usefulness to a prospective searcher of the content on every webpage. The spiders, of course, cannot literally “read” in the human sense. Rather it’s implied that they’ll look for certain terms, examining the quality relevancy of an organization’s credibility to seek out clues concerning the worth of the site.
KEY BENEFITS:
INCREASED TRAFFIC
Ranking and traffic are directly proportional. The higher a website ranks for keywords, the more traffic you’ll receive. The #1 position in Google on average includes a 27.5% Click-through rate consistent with the Advanced Web Ranking CTR study. This implies that if you rank #1 for a research term, every 100 times that term is searched you’ll statistically receive 27-28 visitors. With every position thereafter, the quantity drops significantly.
CREDIBILITY/TRUST
Websites that rank higher within the search results are seen as additionally trustworthy and credible. In fact, 98% of all searchers choose a business that’s listed on Page one of the results. That’s because users gravitate toward links at the top of, assuming those are the most effective business or brands for their needs. Nowadays, everybody “Google’s” what they need and if your website is one of the highest on the page during that search you have positioned yourself because of the credible/trustworthy choice.
IT’S AN INVESTMENT IN YOUR FINANCIAL FUTURE
When you really start to analyze and explore the benefits of SEO you’ll undoubtedly hear that “SEO could be a long process” and “results don’t happen overnight” that is true. Once you invest in SEO you’re doing this knowing that the payoff of the efforts typically won’t happen for 6-9 months. However, once the efforts begin being accomplished you benefit from free traffic for the predictable future.
COST-EFFECTIVE MARKETING
SEO is one of the most cost-effective forms of promotion. Its underlying impact is the result of being in front of a potential customer at the exact time they are looking to engage services or buying a product. You are getting their attention at the best possible time. They have a “need”, they perform a search, they find your business and you have a “solution”. Once your website starts getting traffic from these sorts of queries, searchers are already curious and primed to listen, your job is to simply to convince them you’re the right choice. Once you begin ranking well for terms, it’s about maintaining a consistent flow traffic every month leading to a steady stream of customer inquiries.
YOUR COMPETITORS ARE DOING IT
If your business has products/services that are primarily searched for online, then you no doubt will have competitors that are already actively engaging in SEO. If you would like to grow your business and be wherever users are searching, then you too should invest in SEO services. That’s the only way to stay in the game long term unless, for some reason the working world stops using the internet to look for what they need, and that isn’t going to happen anytime soon.