The Importance of SEO for the Success of Your Business

While it may be widely used, SEO remains one of the most misunderstood and misinterpreted terms in the world of marketing. The field’s somewhat unfair characterization as something riddled with questionable and potentially harmful tactics has caused many business people to devalue SEO’s importance as a part of a solid marketing plan.

 

Unsurprisingly, given such a setting, some have even begun to ask if SEO techniques are even necessary for a business website to grow naturally. Thankfully, not all websites have lost sight of just how pivotal search engine optimization can be despite its currently dubious reputation.

 

Today, we’ll be discussing the importance of SEO for small, midsize, and large businesses. Hopefully, the text will prove to be a successful attempt at debunking the unfair reputation SEO gathered over the last few years.

 

It will also portray SEO not only as a useful segment of a marketing campaign, but a mandatory ingredient that no business should ignore under any circumstance.

 

Why Every Business Should Set Aside a Budget for SEO

 

Like any other viable marketing outlet, SEO can bring your business more qualified leads and customers – if you know how to use it, that is. Sure, very much akin to other successful channels of promotion, SEO isn’t magic, but it’s capable of providing businesses with visibility, web traffic, a high ROI, credibility, and insight into customer behavior.

 

What more can we ask from a marketing channel?

 

But now, let’s take a look at what SEO does for you. When people use a search engine to look for products or services within your niche, you obviously want to appear as high in the rankings as possible. That’s a no-brainer, right?

 

Well, that is precisely what good SEO can do for you.

 

Through a skilled balance of good practices, UX, and overall page value, an SEO expert can make sure your business comes up high when people look for whatever you’re trying to sell. It’s all about making sure people who need your kind of services are able to find you instead of stumbling onto your competitors and taking their business their way.

 

Additionally, by ranking high on right sets of keywords, your business actually gets more credible to customers simply by being high on rankings – and Google catches onto this fairly quick, giving an additional boost to your website.

 

There’s a reason why SEO is considered to be one of the greatest marketing channels in terms of ROI (return on investment). This is because, at its core, SEO is an inbound marketing strategy – it allows you to market to people when they are looking for the products and services your business provides.

 

You don’t have to interrupt their favorite TV shows nor take up space on a page while they are looking at a series of images. You show up exactly when they are looking for businesses like yours.

 

Such a mindset of a customer also changes the marketing concept a bit as you don’t have to convince them that they need your product or service. You just have to persuade them that you are the right business to purchase from. And that’s it.

 

In that regard, with SEO, half the sale battle is already won before it even starts.

 

At the End of the Day, SEO Brings Your Business Traffic, Not Sales

 

Okay, so now that we’ve established the worth of SEO as a channel both in terms of marketing and ROI, it’s time to explain exactly what search engine optimization provides you with.

 

Shortly put, it provides you with traffic. No, not sales. Just traffic.

 

You might be thinking that, by itself, traffic is not going to make you any money. And, if that’s the case, you’re absolutely right, there’s no arguing with that logic. But, if we can use a metaphor here, would you rather set up your storefront on a back street in a small town or place it right in the middle of Times Square?

 

Sure, all those people walking around day and night aren’t going to make you money by default, but chances are that at least a few of them will decide to go a step further from window shopping – and the more people walk by it, the chances of attracting someone rises dramatically.

 

The same logic applies to websites.

 

Just like if you were running a business on Times Square, you still have to try your hardest to sell to customers once they are on your website, and it’s a lot better to do business on a crowded website than on one that’s gasping for traffic.

 

Furthermore, if your SEO expert did a good job, most of the people coming to your site will be qualified leads – in all likelihood, they were searching for businesses like yours when they found you, so they already have a need or interest in your products or services from the moment they land on your digital doorstep.

 

Besides generating valuable traffic, SEO also gives you a chance to gather accurate insight information into your customers’ behavior. If you optimize a website in a way that eliminates the possibility some internal factor caused them to leave, you’ll start to collect correct data in terms of how customers search, how they browse, which language they use, which technology they use, where they live, the times of day they are most active, at which stage of the funnel they left your website, etc.

 

Availability of such data is extremely valuable as it helps make more informed decisions regarding your business and it allows you to better tailor your strategies so that they meet your customers’ demands perfectly.

 

Aligning With SEO’s Current Trends

 

If you’ve made it to this point, chances are you’ve started to fathom just how crucial SEO is when you’re trying to run a business, as well as the importance of optimizing a website correctly. However, up until now, we’ve avoided mentioning a pivotal characteristic of search engine optimization, one that often proves to be the biggest stumbling block of any newcomer wishing to learn about website optimization.

 

SEO is a field in a constant state of flux

 

New trends appear just as fast as the old ones disappear, which makes SEO one of the hardest industries to crack into if you’re a beginner. By the time you master certain trends, chances are new ones have already taken over the market, making a lot of what you know borderline obsolete.

 

That’s why any business hoping to make use of search engine optimization needs to make sure its strategies align with current trends shaping the industry. They don’t want to start optimizing according to rules that worked months ago. As you probably already know, such a course of action can actually hurt a website’s domain rating (DR) beyond repair.

 

Avoiding out-of-date techniques and making sure you rely on battle-tested and currently functional trends is precisely what the following infographic can offer you.

 

This infographic presents you with a total 72 stats that perfectly illustrate the current state of the SEO world and introduce you to its current landscape, arming you with all the knowledge you’ll need to successfully optimize a website.

 

 

By making sure your optimization strategies align nicely with as many of these trends as possible, you’ll be giving your campaigns the best chance of success, as well as give your business a boost that makes all the difference in the world.

 

Author Bio:

Hristina Nikolovska – As the Marketing Manager at SEOTribunal.com, part of Tina’s daily engagements involve raising awareness of the importance of digital marketing when it comes to the success of small businesses. As her first step towards this journey was in the field of content marketing, she’s still using every opportunity she gets to put her thoughts into educational articles.

Twitter: @HristinaNikol