Importance of SEO for your website
When looking at digital marketing, search engine optimization often comes up, but why is it so important?
Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is the name given to the group of actions that attempt to improve organic search engine rankings. These are the order and relevance of unpaid search results within a search engine query. We know that the top paid search results are driven by digital paid marketing tactics, however, the organic results that appear after that are just as important. A website with strong SEO, as well as a paid campaign, can maximize all searches related to their website and business.
Four reasons why SEO is beneficial to any and every business:
To Build Brand Trust and Authority
Ranking higher in the organic search results signals to searchers that you are a top dog in your industry.
Just think about it. If I searched for marketing company in Durban, I’m way more likely to trust the first result than I am the twenty-first. I mean, it’s the first result on Google, the first name on the list. It’s the top dog and that means a lot.
With businesses that are ranking organically, consumers know that they haven’t just paid to be there like the businesses in the ad spots above them. They know that you’re more likely to provide the solution that they are searching for.
To Increase Traffic
Pushing your website up the rankings ladder has a huge impact on the amount of traffic you receive. Don’t believe me? Check out these mind boggling stats.
#1 Ranking Position: 32%
#2 Ranking Position: 17%
#3 Ranking Position: 10%
#4 Ranking Position: 7%
#5 Ranking Position: 5%
By the time you get to the second page of results, less than 1% of users are clicking on your website.
Looking at those numbers, it’s pretty clear why ranking higher is important. The difference between the second spot and the tenth spot can mean the difference between a mothballed website receiving a dribble of users every day and a thriving online space driving a business forward.
It’s not just the volume of traffic that’s important. It’s the permanence.
First, let’s think about paid search. With pay per click (PPC), you pay Google and Google puts your advert on its network. As soon as you stop paying Google, your advert disappears and the traffic dries up. SEO, on the other hand, is designed to last. With SEO, your current performance is based on all the work you’ve done previously. All the content you’ve created, links you’ve built and on-site optimisation you’ve completed. That work doesn’t disappear overnight and neither does the traffic. If you improve your SEO and secure a good ranking position, you can sit back and watch the traffic roll in for months or years without doing anything at all.
To Get Insight into Your Customers
Another great benefit to SEO is that it provides trackable and quantifiable results found through Google Analytics. This allows you to analyse and adapt your strategy in the future.
You’re able to track pretty much every aspect of your work from the most popular keywords and traffic statistics to conversion rates and keyword rankings.
All this insight helps you understand your customers better. And understanding your customers, their goals, pain points and intent will allow you to target them better.
There’s A High return on investment (ROI)
So far, we have showed you that SEO provides brand visibility, authority, sustainable traffic, conversions and customer insights. But best of all, if you do it well, it can deliver a very high return on investment (ROI). Unlike other marketing strategies which have high capital outlays, SEO is essentially free. Well, free in that you don’t have to splash any hard cash. However, you do have to invest resources. You have to invest blood, sweat and tears. We normally call them man hours, but you can call them whatever you fancy. And you need to dedicate a lot of hours into your SEO campaign to achieve the top position. But when you do you will reap the rewards. But nail your SEO and you can increase sales, subscriptions or whatever your end goal is, without increasing your marketing costs. This is a worthwhile investment.