Search engine optimisation – or SEO – is one of those tools that unless you learn the ins and outs, you’re not really going to know exactly how it can help and support your website. Your business is going to be newly getting off the ground and so you need to know all of the available tools that you have to make the website you have stand out properly.
SEO is going to do so much more than improve your website’s searchability. Sure, you can find long tail keywords along with the short tail ones with the help of SEMrush and other keyword sites, but you need to know how it can make you more visible. Keywords are just one part of that equation, and if you don’t yet know how SEO is growing in importance or why, we can give you some clarity. Let’s take a look at how all business websites can benefit from the help of SEO.
- Your website is relying on organic search. Remember those keywords I mentioned earlier? Well, if you have the capability to use SEMrush or Analytics, you’ll be able to see which phrases people are using to land on your website. Organic search is a critical piece of the buyer funnel and it’s going to help you to either complete a sale or complete a conversion. If you want to engage your website visitors, then learning which phrases are being used to find you can work to your advantage. Once you know the trail from your customers’ initial search to a conversion, you’re going to find it much easier to convert future customers.
- Search engine optimisation builds trust. If you want to build a strong foundation for a clean and easy user experience, then building trust is a must. People need to associate your brand as something they can rely on and it’s so much easier to do that with SEO. It makes your business more credible and yet it’s not something that happens overnight. In fact, there are many new elements that go into establishing your business authority on main search engine websites. From natural links to on-page elements being optimised, you can build the credibility your website needs. The one thing that you need to remember is that this doesn’t just happen overnight. It takes a lot of work to get it right.
- It’ll help you to understand what your customers want. The whole point of your website – aside from showcasing what you do – is to understand your customers’ voice. Without that understanding, you’re going to struggle to meet their needs. SEO tells your business what people want and need and from here, you can adjust your marketing plan to suit. Data can offer you the clear signals of intent and that comes from SERP analysis and Analytics.
- Improving the user experience. You want to make sure that you are not just giving people what they want, but showing them that you can maintain a certain level of consistency. Everyone wants to improve visibility and organic rankings and it’s much easier to do if you know what your users want. A positive user experience will be exactly what keeps your website successful. Customers know exactly what they want and if they can’t find it on your website they’re going to click away and go elsewhere. This is what you’re trying to avoid and SEO can help you with that. With quality SEO, you can leverage that positive user experience in your brand’s favour.
- With local SEO comes local engagement. It’s nice to go global with your business but without local SEO, you won’t be able to achieve traffic and conversions from your own community. Mobile traffic is dominating and that means that local search is a key part of your business success. It aims to optimise your digital properties in a specific locality and that can ensure that people find you far more easily. This puts them one step closer to a transaction or an engagement on your website. Focusing on the local community, neighbourhoods and towns and cities on a local level, you can optimise your content and website in the right way.
- It impacts the buying cycle. It’s so important that you understand the buying cycle for your customers. You need to do your research so that you can relay your message for the right deals and products – ones that your customers absolutely want to see. When you use SEO tactics to do this, you can be dependable in the eyes of your customers. Brands have to be visible in the right places for customers to want to look to your website to find answers. You can be the business that’s providing those answers and when you do, you’ll see more customers converted from visitors to buyers.
- SEO is continuously improving. Search engine optimisation tactics can be implemented on your brand’s website and as SEO best practices are always improving, your website will benefit from that. Even short term SEO engagements can benefit your business website and if the website isn’t evaluated over time, you won’t be able to continue to improve it. SEO should be used, but it should also be constantly monitored to ensure that you are staying ahead of the competition. For this, you have to be proactive and look for those significant algorithm changes to know whether or not your algorithm has changed. Staying on top of it will ensure that you are able to avoid falling off the SERPs.
- You will learn more about the internet. The web is always changing and evolving which means that it can be a challenge to stay on top of the search engine results pages. When you stay on top of your SEO, you’ll be in the loop for any changes ahead and that will help you to learn the environment your business is placed in. It will always be beneficial for your brand to find out which businesses are comparable and that will push you towards being more visible.
- It doesn’t have to cost the earth. One of the common misconceptions with SEO is that it costs a lot of money, but it actually doesn’t have to be like that. All of the best things cost something, but it doesn’t have to be unaffordable and in the grand scheme of things in the marketing world, it’s relatively inexpensive. The payoff, however, is worth every cent you put into it. The benefit to your bottom line should always be considered and with the right attention to details and management, exemplary SEO implementation is going to be relevant to your business for years to come. The more you invest, the better it gets and so it’s vital that you invest both time and money into it.
- It’s a great PR tool. Are you trying to build an image for your brand? If so, you need SEO to help you with that. It’s going to build that long-term equity you’re hoping to achieve with the results being a positive ranking and the placement you need on websites. If you offer a good user experience on your website and pair it with your PR strategy, you are able to build something credible for your customers to see. You want your message heard and SEO works alongside PR to make that happen. You want to sell the product or service you’ve come up with and as SEO is no longer a singular siloed channel, you can merge it with other content areas and help your brand to reach more people.