Why SEO Is Important for Your Business

If you have a business website, you have undoubtedly played around on Google and some of the other major search engines to see whether you can easily find it. Our guess is that, with Google nowadays listing more than 1.7 billion websites (according to Statista), it’s not a given that your site will be found anywhere near the top for whatever search term you choose. This is where SEO comes in. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. It consists of a variety of strategies and actions to improve your website’s position in web searches.

On-page SEO refers to changes one can implement to the website itself, including using the right keywords, improving loading speed, improving the total user experience, and using appropriate headers.

Off-page SEO refers mostly to link-building strategies to get quality backlinks from other high-ranking websites to yours.

Does SEO really matter?

In this regard, why don’t we ask the professionals? According to a 2016 survey among 275 top marketing professionals from around the world, 50 per cent of them regarded SEO as the most effective digital marketing tactic. More important than social media, display ads and paid search.

The benefits of SEO

For a business owner a website that has been SEO optimised, therefore, holds many benefits. Let’s look at a few of the most important:

It will make your website more user-friendly. SEO does not merely mean optimising the website for Google and other major search engines. It also means the website is clean, well-structured and uncluttered – making it easier for visitors to find what they are looking for. A visitor comes to your website because he or she is looking for something. If he or she easily finds that, they are more likely to stay longer and click on internal links. For Google, this is a sign of success, and it rewards your site with a higher search ranking.

This will lead to more visitors to become buyers. Once your website manages to keep visitors lingering for longer, chances are significantly higher that they will eventually either become buyers or at least sign up for your newsletter. Statistics show that firms with an optimised website generate more customers and grow 100 per cent faster than firms who do not have such a website.

Building brand awareness. One of the biggest benefits of a successful SEO campaign is that it helps to build brand awareness. The moment your website starts appearing on the first page of Google. Bing or Yahoo for a particular search term, visitors will immediately begin trusting your brand more, and they are more likely to start viewing it as an industry leader. This can very quickly lead to a major shift in your company’s brand awareness.

Overtaking the competition. Let us look at two firms that are operating in the same local market. They sell very similar products at very similar prices. One of them has an SEO-optimised website, the other one doesn’t. With everything else remaining the same, which of the two would you expect to attract more buyers? Which of these firms will eventually attract the biggest market share?

The reality is that when the playing field is so level that you sometimes feel there is no way for your business to stand out in the crowd, a website that has been optimised by an SEO professional can be the one thing that makes the difference between winning or losing.

A word of caution

While SEO can be a powerful marketing tool when used correctly, it can also be carried too far. You have undoubtedly visited websites that are so stuffed with (often irrelevant) keywords and search terms that it’s virtually impossible to make any sense of them. Don’t fall into that trap. Your website should always be written and designed for humans in the first place. After all, they are the ones making the buying decisions.

To find out more about SEO techniques: Click Here!

Sources:

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/why-seo-is-important-for-business/248101/#close

https://www.webfx.com/internet-marketing/is-SEO-important-for-every-business.html

https://www.improvemysearchranking.com/5-key-benefits-seo-small-businesses/