Why Is SEO Important for Businesses?

So you’re writing some fantastic, high quality content and you’re regularly posting it to your social media channels. Yet despite everything, you still don’t see your website at the top of Google. What could you possibly be doing wrong?

The most likely reason is that you haven’t fully optimised your content for search engines. Yes the content itself may be great, but if other bloggers are writing mediocre content that is fully optimised, they will always have a slight edge and better chance of ranking near the top.

So here are the top reasons why your business needs to get on board with search engine optimisation (SEO) and how your other marketing efforts can benefit.

MAXIMISE ROI

SEO is a form of inbound marketing. It’s preferable above other types of offline advertising because it continues to offer rewards for the effort you put into SEO content writing long after the blog post is published. It can also work out more cost-effective than other forms of online marketing such as Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising, social media marketing and email marketing. But perhaps best of all, you want to be enjoying the best visibility possible for the content you have spent so much time writing.

PPC and social media may boost your revenue and showcase your brand image, it’s SEO that remains the backbone of your online presence, constantly working hard behind the scenes and marrying seamlessly into your other digital marketing efforts.

SEO is also favourable because it’s largely invisible and sympathetic to searchers needs: if you have optimised your site and blog post well, hopefully it will rank for the types of questions a searcher might be entering to find an answer to their question. You become a type of answerbank, and in this regard both your aims and those of Google’s become the same. Separate studies have also shown people are more willing to trust the quality of accuracy of organic search results over paid (or sponsored) Google AdWords.

SEO does the hard part for you by getting potential customers through the door, it’s then your job to convince them that you’re the best business to fulfil their needs.

IMPROVE YOUR CREDIBILITY

In the SEO world, it’s no secret that Google rules. This search engine holds credibility and the trust in the search results it delivers. It’s a natural assumption that those businesses at the top of the SERPs are the most relevant and trustworthy for the searchers phrase, while those at the bottom are probably less so.

But what helps Google trust your website? As well as considering the keywords you want to rank for, you have to consider things like backlinks, links to other websites, traffic volumes, easy and user friendly web page navigation, ensuring none of your websites pages contain errors, and more recently, attention to how fast your web pages load, SSL certificates and more.

Keep on top of all these factors and you’ll be in good stead to beat the competition by showing you’re a credible company with a trustworthy website.

INCREASE TRAFFIC

An unoptimised site will find it more difficult for customers to find you – compared with the same site when fully optimised. And it will prove particularly difficult to attract those who didn’t already know they needed your products and services.

This is why Keyword Research is a vital step to ensuring your blog post can attract the type of traffic looking for the content you are providing. It gives you a straw poll of the types of searches people do when attempting to answer the sort of questions you may be writing about. Like many forms of advertising, it’s both based on intuition and educated guesswork. While you may feel you know all types phrases people might search for, there will always be that one person out there who would say: “That’s funny, I would have searched for … instead.” And they are not wrong, hence why keyword research is necessary. Both to analyse the levels of search volume on the phrases you know about, and to highlighting any alternative keyword opportunities you may not even have considered when writing the post in the first place!

To put this into another context,if you had a high-street store selling discounted mountaineering equipment you’re much more likely to be successful by opening it in the Lake District where there is a constant footfall of your target customers, rather than opening it on London’s Bond Street next to a Prada and simply assuming people will come inside.

ANALYSE, TWEAK AND REPEAT (it never stops!)

SEO is a long term commitment and in order to see true success from it you need to continue monitoring and tweaking your approach as you would with any other marketing strategy.

Google Analytics is an invaluable SEO tool allowing historic and realtime analysis of traffic to your site. It gives you all the detail you need to identify sales funnels, your visitors behaviour including how they found you and in some cases what they searched for. It is also not limited to organic searches, but will also give you a detailed analysis of any active PPC campaigns you may also have.

So don’t lose out on customers simply because you don’t fully understand search engine optimisation, or assume it takes more time and money than you have to spare to get it off the ground. Some things are intuitive and, as the site owner, you may be best placed to understand your searchers habits and needs.

Our team of SEO experts can conduct a complete SEO audit of your website and identify what tweaks can offer a world of difference to your rankings and site traffic. If you are interested in ramping up traffic, increasing your sales leads and enjoying the full benefit of the content you’ve carefully written, you should get in touch with us today!