Every business grows by delivering value through products and services that fill a need, solve a problem or lead to a desired goal. To achieve this, your business must first be visible online to your ideal prospects.
Enter SEO.
Search Engine Optimization helps with this ‘findability’ problem. SEO can ensure that your business ranks high on search engines, attracts the right customers, showcases your value, and boosts profits continuously.
No Business Can Ignore SEO
Your prospects use the Web to research purchases. When a health-conscious family makes decisions worth $10,000 over the next 5 years based on information from a Google search, you need to be ‘discovered’ by that family – and millions like them in your market.
I conceived the term ‘SEOnomics‘ to meld SEO with economics, a process of maximizing profits and generating big business successes through SEO. Effective SEO interweaves technical elements of website optimization with buyer psychology to match a company’s objectives to the online environment.
Before formulating your strategy, ask yourself these questions:
- Where are your customers on the Web?
- How can they be reached effectively?
- What is the least expensive way to impact them?
- Which areas can be leveraged for synergy?
- Which ‘tools’ are best? How to use them?
With a strategy harnessed to website architecture optimized for high search engine ranking, your business will be super effective in boosting sales and profits – if it has one more important element…
Understanding Visitor Intent
SEO can steer a business through rough economic seas, staying profitable despite recessions and downturns, if it is rooted in a deep understanding of visitor intent.
Knowing what your prospective customers want helps you deliver solutions they’ll happily purchase. SEO specialists get inside the mind of your typical customers, understand their desires, and craft a winning SEO strategy designed to capture their attention, nurture it into trust, and grow it into loyalty. Your prospect becomes a customer, then a repeat buyer, and ultimately a referrer and evangelist for your brand and business.
In this way, an intelligent SEO strategy will:
- boost sales and bottom-line profit
- reduce marketing expenses by enhancing effectiveness
- increase insight and understanding into your clientele’s needs
- leverage synergies with other marketing efforts.
SEO Targets ‘Low Hanging Fruit’ For Rapid Profitability
SEO is cost-effective in growing businesses. Many are content with a 2% sales conversion – or less. This means 98% of their marketing is wasteful! SEO can fix that by convincing non-buyers, targeting them at the point of sale.
According to Power Retail, 86% of in-store buyers conduct online searches before purchasing, and 80% rely on this information to make a decision. Even in B2B purchases, 52% of buyers surveyed admitted to researching purchases online. Effective SEO fills the needs of these website visitors and converts many into buyers.
SEO Is More Than A Traffic Machine – It’s A Conversion Crusher!
Tailoring your website to match what is in your prospect’s mind will speak straight to their deepest desires. Your SEO plan should target keywords, yet be powered by buyer psychology, understand buying cycles, and factor in the customer research process.
With this, you’ll skyrocket your sales conversion. Using powerful software tools to pick the right keywords is important. The transformative element, though, is tracking your customer’s behavior to learn what they want. This eliminates guesswork and can turbocharge your sales at low cost.
SEO Can Tell You Why Visitors Don’t Buy
SEO isn’t just about code – it’s about people.
If your business serves a huge market but your visitors aren’t buying, SEO can help you understand why – and show how to mirror their needs better. By creating laser focused landing pages which focus on the issues and problems your audience wants solved:
- You’ll get accurate estimates of what clients want
- You’ll identify what works better, and implement it to engage visitors
- You’ll attract better prospects, sell them more, can price offers higher, and get delighted buyers to refer new business
SEO Is Friendly On Your Marketing Budget
SEO is effective even in difficult economic times because of its longevity. No one pulls the plug on effective SEO. Your efforts can bring in a steady, growing return on a modest investment for many years to come.
We know SEO is great for cost-effective brand building. Smart brand managers use SEO to deliver online ads at just the right time to engender trust and plant a seed that grows into a money tree. The right SEO strategy can even help a business secure funding, find investors, or build recognition for companies planning an IPO.
SEO Can Future-Proof Your Business’ Profitability
Global mobile data traffic is set to explode exponentially in the near future, with projections suggesting 26 times growth over the next 5 years.
While attracting a crowd of new buyers is a goal for mobile search optimization, another is managing brand reputation and controlling PR disasters such as the recent Toyota Camry story that went viral on the Web.
Currently, 91% of all mobile Internet use is “social”. Optimizing your website on the basis of visitor intent can help you win this high stakes battle for a prospect’s mind.
Every Business Needs SEO
It’s important to recognize, SEO is not a cost, but an investment. An investment in the future of any business. A cost-effective marketing method with high return that extends infinitely. From a purely economic perspective, SEO delivers value for years to come.
In the ultimate analysis, SEO is less about mechanics and has more to do with economics.
It’s about getting more people to your website, convincing them to take action, and turning them into customers, repeat buyers and raving fans. Your profit grows, your brand gains strength and your marketing message resonates in the marketplace, rippling out to reach newer audiences.
Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.
About The Author
Trond Lyngbø is the founder of Search Planet and a senior SEO Consultant. He has over 10 years of experience in SEO, e-commerce, content strategy and digital analysis. His clients include multinational Fortune 500 corporations and major Norwegian companies. Trond has helped grow businesses through more effective search marketing and SEO strategies. He is most passionate about working with e-commerce companies and web shops to develop and expand their omni-channel marketing initiatives.