If you’ve been running an online store or a website for years, you perhaps know something about the concept of the search engine; how you can drive more visitors to your site, or simply how to make your site appear at the top of SERPs.
In the digital marketing space, strategy is an essential aspect if you want to reach new customers, keep existing ones, and penetrate a new marketplace.
Google reports an estimated 3.5 billion searches a day, recording at least a 10% increase annually. Millions of people shop online every day, and to drive them your way, you have to reach them at the right place and time.
- What is SEO?
- What Methods Are Involved In An SEO Strategy?
- Why You Need SEO In Digital Marketing
- 1. SEO Brings Relevant Leads And Drives Traffic
- 2. SEO Increases Site Visits And Sales
- 3. SEO Builds Trust And Reputation
- 4. SEO Improves PPC
- 5. Consumers Research Online Before Buying Your Brand
- 6. SEO Improves The User Experience
What is SEO?
SEO is the short form for Search Engine Optimisation. It is a set of practices meant to put a website at the top of search results on Google and other search engines. In most cases, search engines crawl and read every aspect of a website before ranking it.
When you practice SEO, you optimize your website for search engines to understand the concept and theme of your website and make it visible to the target audience. SEO makes your website easy to notice when people search for a query or a keyword related to your brand.
Related: What is SEO? Complete Guide
There is more SEO can do for your small online business. If you want to help search engines like Google to find, crawl, index, and list your website at the top, you have to invest some time in your SEO strategy.
What Methods Are Involved In An SEO Strategy?
SEO is a method of collecting user traffic on a website. It involves three main stages that increase the number of visitors to a website and making it an authority in time. These are the methods involved in SEO:
- On-page optimization: This is a technique to increase user traffic and visibility. The method involves making the website more appealing to search engines, like Meta keywords, keyword density, and valuable content on landing pages.
- Off-page optimization: This involves everything you do to strengthen the relationship between your website and others. For instance, you can focus on creating backlinks that drive more visitors to your website. Guest posting and blogging are some methods you can use to build backlinks and drive huge traffic to your website.
- Technical SEO: It involves mobile-friendly site security, indexing, site architecture, site speed, indexing, and many others.
Why You Need SEO In Digital Marketing
There is a lot of myth on the importance of SEO in the digital marketing arena. For instance, most marketers believe that there are many alternatives to marketing that are way beyond SEO. That it is outdated, shady, and doesn’t work for most companies. These myths may be true if only you don’t practice SEO the right way.
Related: Top Digital Marketing ROI Stats
Well, there is still a need for SEO in the current digital marketing industry. Those who understand the concept will agree that SEO can help your company grow its digital marketplace in the shortest time. Here are some reasons why you will need SEO in the digital world.
1. SEO Brings Relevant Leads And Drives Traffic
The main reason why your business should have a website is to drive prospects. When you have a fully optimized website, you appear in organic search, drive massive traffic to the site and increase customers with time.
Related: Marketing Agency Directories To Get You The Best Leads
When you choose SEO, you will conduct keyword research and create content relevant to your website. Your website will rank at the top of Google and other search engines for some keywords, and that increases your traffic.
When there is a lot of traffic coming to your site, you increase your brand recognition and become an authority site in the industry. You are also able to convert your visitors to customers. SEO also helps you to create content that markets your brand based on keywords related to your business.
2. SEO Increases Site Visits And Sales
The main objective of marketing your business online is to increase sales and revenue. SEO can help your business increase sales by positioning your brand before potential customers.
Related: Ways To Boost SEO With Brand Metrics
When you resort to local SEO, you can increase your sales in the shortest time. For instance, according to Google, at least 50% of people doing local searches visit the online store that same day. It means when you conduct local SEO and Google lists your business at the top, you become more visible to potential customers and increase your sales.
When you optimize your website by doing local SEO, it makes it easier for prospects to get your business address, customer care contact, business hours, and other helpful information to visit your website.
Related: Local SEO Ranking Factors Used By Google
Google now offers a Google My Business feature where you can list your business and display important information to visitors whenever they enter a keyword related to your brand.
3. SEO Builds Trust And Reputation
As a new business, having a solid and excellent reputation is critical to growth. Indeed, most customers are only going to buy your brand online if they trust your business.
Related: How To Keep A Good Reputation In The Media
Most online shoppers rely on Google and other search engines to show them the most reputable and best brands in the online market. Therefore, if you have your business is appearing at the top of SERP, it means you are a trusted brand, and most people will be willing to buy from you.
It also means, when your business is hardly appearing in organic search or at the top of search engines, you are not doing enough to market it. This leaves people wondering if there is anything wrong with your business. Appearing low on search ranking has cost a lot of businesses that rely on digital marketing.
When your company appears on organic search, it becomes more trusted and stands a better chance of converting more visitors to buyers.
4. SEO Improves PPC
The role of SEO in digital marketing is to make your business appear at the top of the search and improve your quality score. When using PPC to market your brand, you should know that quality score affects your Pay Per Click marketing campaign. With a higher quality score, you can reduce the cost per click, make your ads perform better, and make it cost-effective running marketing campaigns.
Related: PPC Tips For Beginners
When you optimize your website for search engines, you can improve the quality score of your PPC marketing campaign. SEO also compliments other marketing strategies like search engine advertising. According to a recent study from Google, you can improve website traffic by 50% when you pair search engine advertising with SEO.
Related: PPC Skills To Become Master PPC Specialist
5. Consumers Research Online Before Buying Your Brand
Many studies have shown how customers do their research online before they can buy products and services. When customers want to buy a new product or shop for the first time from an online store, they will probably read the review on the business first.
For instance, a study by BazaarVoice shows that 82% of customers research online in person before buying any item. The same study also shows that 45% of consumers read online reviews before deciding on a product to buy, and 56% count on online reviews before choosing to buy.
Related: Building A Personal Brand
At the research stage of purchase, SEO helps customers to access your business and learn about it. Therefore, if you want your business to win customers online, it should be easy to find in search engines. When you practice effective SEO, you make it easier for prospects to find your business, visit your website, and hopefully convert into buyers.
6. SEO Improves The User Experience
Another reason your business should look forward to incorporating SEO in marketing is to increase visibility and user experience. SEO is good for visibility and brand awareness and improves how people behave when they visit your website.
When you make your website user-friendly and easy to navigate, most people find it enjoyable to stay. SEO also makes your website compatible with devices like smartphones and tablets. That means prospects can reach your website on a mobile phone or a laptop.
Related: Page Experience Report In Google Search Console
How a website loads on a device is very crucial in determining how visitors navigate it. It should take the shortest time for a website to load on a device to improve the user experience. SEO helps you focus on measures to optimize web speed and reduce loading time.
Final Thoughts
Search engine optimization is a sure way of growing your brand and business online. When you have your business appearing on organic search and SERP, you increase your online visibility, create brand awareness, and improve the likelihood of converting more leads to customers.
On average, 51% of customers arriving at a website get theirs via organic search. It means that if SEO can help your business appear on organic search, it can also improve your sales.
There are many reasons you should invest in SEO because it plays a significant role in digital marketing. These are the benefits of SEO you should look forward to when you launch your digital marketing strategy.
