Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an important marketing strategy many businesses use to drive traffic to their website. Why? In today’s digital world, the web is the place to go to gain leads for your sales department and grow your business through online sales. Funny that one of the most asked questions about SEO is…is SEO dead?
SEO is definitely not dead. U.S. companies are investing more into SEO than ever, spending over $80 billion annually. While social media, PPC, display advertising, and other online platforms can generate traffic to websites, search engines, especially Google, drive the most online traffic. In fact, 53% of all trackable website traffic comes from organic search, according to BrightEdge. When set up properly, SEO is one of the only online marketing channels that can continue to pay dividends over time, where advertising needs ongoing funding to send traffic to your site. SEO is not going to stop working anytime soon.
Seven Reasons Why Your Business Should Go SEO:
SEO Works!
SEO is effective and generates results. According to a recent study by BrightEdge, 40% of revenue is captured by organic traffic. SEO is trackable so you can see what’s working and what’s not working. And with comprehensive analytics, you have the ability to drill down at a granular level and see demographic information and other engagement metrics for individuals who have interacted with your website. You can also set attribute values to your lead conversions, making it easier to see the return you’re getting from your SEO investment.
SEO Boosts Your Credibility and Authority
When you combine your SEO efforts with content marketing and create informative, valuable content, you have the opportunity to build trust and credibility with prospects on their buying journey, from the research phase through purchase to becoming a loyal customer.
SEO is Affordable
Inbound marketing strategies like SEO are much more cost-effective than outbound marketing strategies like cold-calling. SEO targets users who are actively searching online for products and services like yours, so the traffic generated to your site is more qualified. And leads generated by an inbound strategy like SEO cost 61% less than leads generated from an outbound strategy. SEO drives results that other marketing channels just can’t match.
SEO Drives Mobile Device Traffic
According to TechJury, the mobile market share worldwide is 52.1% compared to the desktop market share of 44.2%, and 40% of people search only on a smartphone, especially when searching for local products and services. What does this mean? Local search optimization is important, and optimizing for mobile is critical to ensure your ability to gain more opportunities to reach people.
SEO Gives You Access to the Online Market
Organic SEO is more important than ever. Consumers spent $861.12 billion online with U.S. merchants in 2020, up an remarkable 44.0% year over year, according to Digital Commerce 360 estimates. That’s an incredible amount of business you will miss out on without SEO tactics in place to get you to page one of the search engines.
SEO Puts Your Name Out There
Your business needs to be on the web and not just on your website. Not having a good content profile will translate into lost business. Having a solid content profile means that your business has valuable content on its site and participates with other sites, including social media, forums, video sites, directories, etc. Search engines use updates to search algorithms to see where you are on the web, so having a content profile in place will ensure the search engines properly evaluate your site and presence on the web and deem it important.
Your Competition Is Using SEO
When your competition is aggressively using SEO, and you are not, someone will lose out, and it won’t be your competition. SEO is ongoing and needs to be actively managed. If you’re not on top of your SEO, another company will be, and they’ll pull ahead of you. Do not let your competition reign unchecked online. Get your business up to speed and start creating value (and clicks and customers).
Putting the work needed into developing organic SEO is more important than ever to remain relevant and generate more revenue. As a business, implementing SEO is one of the most important things you can do to build your online presence. It’s not only crucial for sales; it’s essential for branding, too. It’s now or never, and never might be too late. Check out Unreal Web Marketing’s SEO services today and see why SEO must be a part of your marketing strategy!