Major Points of the Article
How can SEO help your business grow - 9 ways in fact.
SEO improves the credibility of your business as people trust organic search more than paid search.
Local SEO strategies can increase the number of customers that visit your physical store even if you don't sell your products/services online.
Once established, SEO provides your business with long-term value that exceeds the short-term value from PPC (Adwords adverts).
What is SEO?
If you’re a business owner, then it is very likely that you’ve heard of SEO and have considered using it as part of your marketing strategy. But what is SEO and how can SEO help your business?
Search engine optimisation (SEO) is the process of improving the position (or ranking) of your website on a search engine results page (SERP) when users search for certain words, phrases, or keywords.
For example, let’s assume that your old TV just broke and you’re in the market for a new one. How would you find information about the different types of TVs available? How do you know which one is the best? How do you choose which store to purchase it from?
That’s right, you would Google it!
As you scroll through the SERP for the “best tv”, you eventually pick the webpage you think will provide you with the information you are looking for. And, the result you clicked on is most likely on the first page, or even the very first result.
But those organic results didn’t just appear on the first page of Google out of nowhere. The business owners who own the website used SEO to help Google’s algorithm crawl, index and rank their sites as high as possible... and so should you.
The Importance of SEO
To illustrate the impact and importance of SEO, let’s take a look at some statistics.
68% of all users click on one of the first 5 organic results.
Results on the second page only receive 0.78% of all clicks.
81% of retail shoppers conduct research online before purchasing.
88% of people who conduct a local search on their smartphone visit a related store within a week.
After seeing those numbers, it’s hard to think of a reason not to include SEO in your business's digital marketing strategy.
9 Reasons Why You Need SEO
If you’re still not convinced, keep reading to find precisely how can SEO help your business grow.
1. Creates Brand Awareness
Firstly, SEO increases the visibility and brand awareness of your business. It is estimated that Google processes over 8.5 billion searches per day and organic traffic accounts for more than half of all website traffic. So if you use SEO effectively and your company’s web page ranks high, there is a massive opportunity to be seen by your potential customers.
2. Improves Brand Credibility and Trust
Another benefit of SEO is that it builds brand credibility and trust amongst your consumers. Google typically wants to rank high-quality websites that contain useful content for their users and people know this. Therefore, when users come across your business’ website at the top of their search, they trust that your website will be of high-quality and credible.
3. Directs Qualified Leads To Your Website
People usually conduct searches with intent. Whether their intention is to find information or make a purchase, people who click on your organic results are already interested in your business, products or services. As a result, these people are what is known as “qualified leads” – website visitors who are more likely to convert into your paying customers. Essentially, through using SEO you can have a dramatic increase in sales.
4. Encourages Local Customers to Visit Your Physical Store
A study by Think with Google revealed that 76% of people who use their phones to search for businesses nearby end up visiting the business within a day. Furthermore, 28% of these visits result in a purchase. This data suggests that even if you own an offline brick-and-mortar store, it is still worth investing in local SEO to take advantage of the rise in “near me” searches.
5. Enhances Website Usability
SEO doesn’t involve cramming your website with keywords so you can rank well, it also includes optimising all aspects of your website to make it easy for Google’s bots and your customers to navigate.
One of these factors is your page speed. Google wants to improve the users’ web experience with fast-loading web pages. Not only will optimising your page speed be rewarded by Google, but it will also prevent frustrated customers from exiting your web page if it loads too slow.
Another factor to consider is desktop and mobile. More than half of all web traffic comes from smartphones and tablets. Therefore, it is critical that your website is mobile-friendly. A mobile-optimised website should automatically resize to fit mobile screens, have accessible menus that are easy to navigate and have fonts that are large enough to read on a small screen.
By improving your website quality for search engines, you also improve your customer’s user experience. This can increase the time they spend browsing your website and leads to a purchase.
6. Provides Long-Term Value
You might have noticed that there are two types of results that appear in your Google searches. The results you see at the top are usually a form of paid advertising called pay-per-click (PPC provided by Adwords), and the results below these ads are organic results.
PPC gives your business the advantage of sitting at the top of Google searches within minutes which allows you to start driving search traffic towards your website instantly. However, once you turn off your paid ads, the traffic stops.
In comparison to SEO, PPC is very expensive, as you pay per click, which can be anywhere from $0.12 to over $32 and more... Essentially, for PPC you might have to spend $2,000 every month to get 134 visitors, whereas if you spent $2,000 every month on SEO, it can provide increasing returns. Returns such as 50 visitors in the first month, 100 per month in three months, and 1,000s per month in a year.
So what would you rather? Spend $2,000 per month and get 134 visitors or spend $2,000 per month and get 1,000s of potential customers visiting your website?
SEO is complex and if you don’t have the time or skills to maintain your website’s SEO every month, you can always outsource it to an SEO expert. Essentially, the experts at Click Rabbit can create the revenue-generating results you are looking for, while saving you the hassle of doing it yourself.
7. Consumers Prefer Organic Results
Again, PPC results appear at the top of your customers’ Google searches, which might sound like a foolproof way to boost your website traffic. But what if I told you that 67% of people actually prefer to click on organic results rather than paid results?
Web users tend to trust organic results more because where some businesses need to pay for a spot at the top, businesses at the top of organic results were deemed worthy of being there by Google.
8. SEO Advertises Your Business 24/7
The best thing about the internet is that it is available all day every day. This is important because your customers have different work, study, sleep and social schedules... And, there is no perfect time to capture all of them using traditional offline marketing techniques.
So by using SEO to improve your online presence, your customers can view your website, learn about your business and purchase your products or services at any time of the day.
In particular, SEO can help you promote your business to potential customers even while you are sleeping.
9. Outrank Your Competitors
As more and more businesses have moved online, SEO has become an essential part of any marketing strategy. Therefore, there is a high chance that your competitors are already improving their SEO. So if you are not already investing in SEO, you are sending all of your potential customers to your competitors.
And, in the long term, as your competitors are getting all those new customers through their SEO, it can lead to a drop in your market share and sales.
To ensure that you don’t fall behind and ideally, outrank your competitors, you too will need to implement your own SEO strategy.
If you are ready to start reaping the benefits of SEO in Australia or another region, you need to speak to one of our SEO experts. They specialise in psychographic and demographic targeting that will assist you in creating more traffic and sales. Click below to schedule a time with one of our experts.
