SEO has been around for about 25 years and has become synonymous with online marketing.Fact is, marketers have been bandying this term around for so long that it's almost lost its meaning.You know you need to use SEO as part of your digital marketing efforts, but do you really know why? Here's a quick refresher about some of the benefits of SEO.
Compared to PPC advertising, SEO is low cost. The only costs associated with it are your time if you're doing it yourself. If you hire someone to do it for you, their efforts will essentially pay for themselves.With PPC, when you win customers with your campaign, you have to pay per click for the privilege. This means, that a prospect has cost you money before they've made a purchase.With SEO, a customer can visit your website as many times as they like before they decide to buy and it won't cost you anything.When it's done correctly, in compliance with the latest search engine algorithms, SEO never fails.
Unlike direct marketing campaigns such as calling or emailing potential clients, SEO gives people what they ask for.It safe to assume that when someone types ''cars for sale'' into a search engine, they're shopping around for a vehicle. If that search brings your website to their attention, it's their choice to click on it.In this way, SEO bypasses the negative emotions that cold calling can stir up in potential customers. There are few things more annoying than a stranger calling you with a sales pitch as you're sitting down to a family dinner.
While it may take a little while for sales to pick up. You can see the effect your SEO efforts are having immediately.Thanks to reporting tools and Analytics, you can see how many clicks each SEO effort wins online. In this way, you can adjust your tactics to stick with what works.
Nowadays, it takes work to stand out among the online crowd. There are millions of businesses just like yours in the world, and they're all competing for the same customers. This is particularly true if you're into e-commerce.Using keyword analysis tools, you make sure that you're using words in your content that will guide customers to your store.With SEO, you move away from a hit-and-miss approach to marketing your goods and services online. Instead, you can target the exact customers you want.The result of this is always an increase in web traffic over time, however slight.
Your customers will judge you on your web presence. If you aren't good enough to attract the attention of search engines, you don't exist to them.People want results fast. Unless they have a good reason, they aren't going to search for your website by name.They trust Google to come up with the most legitimate search results for what they want. If Google doesn't see your website as the best one for their search query, your customers don't either.
From the above, it isn't hard to figure out that you need to be as close to the top of page 1 of the search engine results as possible.It's a fact that over 67% of customers visit the top five websites on the SERP. That doesn't leave a lot of clicks for the millions of websites that follow behind.In the digital world, the only way to get right in the faces of potential customers is with SEO. Even PPC ads use SEO keyword principles.When customers find your website via organic search, this helps to push it up the rankings on the search engine results page.
It's difficult to crack it in the online world. New websites go live every minute of the day, and competition for customers is fierce.If you aren't doing SEO, you're not in the race. Without SEO to attract new customers, you can't grow your business.
When your PPC credits run out, your ad disappears from Google's front page. The results from successful SEO efforts stick around for a while, even if you take a few days off.Although SEO is an ongoing process that you need to refine from time to time, the results are long-lived.After an initial boost to your website's SEO, all you have to do is update your content regularly to keep your page up where it belongs.
While there are benefits associated with a killer Pay-Per-Click campaign, internet users tend to select organic search results first.People feel manipulated by ads, and prefer to make their own decisions about which websites to visit. That's why adblockers are around.If you're targeting a millennial audience, unless they already trust you, they'll ignore you.
It's likely that SEO will be around for the next 25 years or more. Without it, the search engines can't deliver on their promises in a realm that exists only to satisfy search queries.When you mention on your website that you have cars for sale, you are unwittingly targeting customers looking for cars.That's how simple basic SEO is. It only gets a little more complicated if you want to stand out as the best place that has cars for sale, or target only local customers, or are aiming for a certain demographic.
Are you ready to discover the benefits of SEO for yourself?We can get you on the path to digital marketing success. Get in touch to schedule a consultation call and let's get the show on the road.
Not sure how digital marketing fits into your overall business strategy? Do you want to learn more about the strategies best suited for your specific business? Book a free, no-obligation strategy call to chat with one of our Digital Strategists!
Get Started
