Why Search Engine Optimization?

In terms of digital marketing, this is a question that many new businesses and brands ask. SEO or Search Engine Optimization has been around for more than a decade and a half now. Many clients accept SEO at face value, but you must understand why SEO is important for brands and businesses.

We will discuss why Search Engine Optimization is still a viable marketing strategy for businesses today.

Search Engine Optimization: A Definition

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is the process of driving organic traffic to your website.

Let’s start by defining organic traffic. “Organic traffic” refers to visitors who go to your website via unpaid (organic) search results. Paid search ads do not generate organic traffic. Visitors who discover your website by using a search engine like Google or Bing are organic visitors because they are not linked from another page or came through a referral link.

Optimizing your ability to generate organic traffic is called SEO.

Using SEO strategically can help you generate organic leads for the products or services you offer. It is not uncommon for digital marketers to write how-to blog articles and optimize them for SEO purposes. By conducting a search, people can find information on how to complete that task. It could generate traffic that could result in paying subscribers or customers if the blog’s article ranks well.

The stats behind Search Engine Optimization

Here are some key SEO statistics that will help you understand how it can impact your business:

• 93% of all online experiences begin with a search engine.
• Organic search accounts for 51% of website traffic. Comparatively, 10% came from paid search, 5% from social, and 34% from all other sources.
• Organic search traffic captures more than 40% of revenue.
• Before conducting a major purchase online, 81% of users conduct some type of search.
• Google’s top 3 search results receive 75% of all clicks.
• Google receives over 5.5 billion search queries each day.
• There is a 31.7% average click-through rate on the #1 ranked website.
• The #1 ranking in organic search results will receive ten times more clicks than the #10 ranked one.
• 70-80% of users ignore paid search results and only click organic search results.
• Traffic to content websites is primarily driven by search engines. Compared to social media, it beats it 300%.
• Additionally, search results drive 10x more traffic to shopping websites than social media.
• Pay-per-click has 20x fewer traffic opportunities than SEO on both mobile and desktop.
• According to 61% of online marketers, improving their SEO and organic presence is their top priority.
• Online marketers who combine organic SEO and PPC generate 25% more clicks and 27% more profits compared to those who focus only on SEO.
• The majority of businesses and marketers outsource all or part of their search campaign to SEO specialists.
• Google uses two of the most important metrics to rank websites: high-quality content and link building, according to Andrey Lipattsev, Search Quality Senior Strategist at Google.

As you can see, the stats don’t lie-SEO is crucial to your business’ success. If your business is not using SEO to increase its online presence, you can trust that your competitors are and you will be left behind.

The 5 reasons why you should invest in SEO

Every day, there is some new “it” strategy or technology claiming to be the next big thing in online business marketing. Due to this, it’s easy to feel disillusioned by the endless methods and tools available, and you may wonder if traditional methods are obsolete.

You’ll be glad to know that SEO is still an essential marketing strategy, even if you have doubts about it. Investing in SEO provides these top benefits:

Impact on the Long-Term

By no means is SEO a product, but a long-term process that provides long-term benefits as well. It’s not an overnight fix, but it will have a lasting effect on your business. The results of SEO efforts can take up to six months or more to become noticeable. Particularly for competitive keywords, this is true.

Businesses and companies that first try SEO are discouraged after receiving “no results.” If you want to succeed with SEO, you need to stick to your strategy until the end. SEO will rank your website high in the SERPs, and you will see a steady increase in sales for years to come if properly executed and maintained.

Traffic comes primarily from organic search

There’s no way around it: organic traffic is essential to businesses. You’ll drive organic traffic and feed conversions and engagement by ranking highly for target keywords. To increase organic traffic, you’ll want to optimize for the most popular search engine: Google.

It’s no secret that Google dominates 92.71% of all search queries; it is the world’s number one search engine. This means that 9 out of 10 users prefer Google for searching online to its competitors such as Bing and Yahoo!, Baidu, and many others.

Those other search engines can help boost a business’ visibility as well if you play your cards right. It’s just that Google is the clear leader, so your resources should be focused on optimizing for Google.

SEO Enhances Your Business’ Credibility and Trustworthiness

Search engine users will take note of your website if you get to the first page of SERPs. Despite not recognizing it, they will do it. In the eyes of end-users, appearing on the first page of Google is a vote of confidence. Their minds will tell them: “Google says this business is an authority and relevant to my query, so that must be the case.”

It takes time to build authority and trust, just as it does with SEO. Your brand will eventually become known as an authority once you establish a solid SEO campaign and high-quality content. It’s easier to establish trust and authority when you rank high in the search results since your rank pretty much speaks for itself.

Better SEO = Better User Experience

It is the primary objective of an SEO expert to create an optimal user experience. You can gain credibility and trust for your brand if your website has a clean, intuitive user interface. A good user experience means responsive content, proper use of tags, easy navigation, etc. Almost all marketers strive for better SEO rankings and maximum visibility, but few realize the importance of an optimal user experience to achieve these goals.

Search engines are always striving to provide the best experience for their users. Platforms like these are able to determine if a website has a good user experience or not. Your visitors/customers will be happier if you offer a positive user experience, which can result in a lower bounce rate and better conversions. If your customers are unhappy with the user experience, you’ll likely lose them forever.

Optimizing the page load time is essential for better customer experience and conversion rates, for example. A survey shows that 79% of unhappy customers will not return to a site if its performance is poor. Additionally, 47% of users expect the webpage to load within 2 seconds or less, while 64% of mobile users expect the pages to load within 4 seconds.

You can leverage quality SEO to promote a positive user experience for your brand.

SEO drives more business locally

In light of the massive popularity of mobile traffic, local search has become an integral part of the success of small to medium-sized businesses.

Local SEO is a must if you want to attract more local customers. The goal of this strategy is to optimize your website and digital properties for a specific area. If you want to find a local restaurant or plumber, you’re going to use your mobile device and do a little online searching.

Customer service is no different.

Driving more people to your brick-and-mortar store requires a strong local SEO strategy. To give you an idea of how important local SEO is, here are a few local SEO stats:

• Customers who perform a local search on their smartphones have called or visited a store within 24 hours.
• Google searches for local information account for 46% of all searches.
• More than 97% of customers learn about a local business or company online.
• Mobile users are more likely to contact local businesses if their website is mobile-friendly.
• 78% of location-based mobile searches result in an offline purchase.
• On the first page of the SERPs, 92% of searchers will click on a business.

The benefits of using SEO to grow your business are numerous, as you can see. However, SEO remains one of the most difficult solutions to grasp. Consider hiring an SEO professional if you have trouble understanding SEO.