It’s estimated that Google processes more than 5 billion searches in a day and that the average person conducts between three and four searches a day. There are likely people searching for your product or service right now.
To reach these potential customers online, you need not just a website, but an optimized, accessible one. SEO is important to businesses of every age, size, and industry. To help you understand why it’s important, we’ll explain five of the major benefits of SEO.
A Brief Overview of SEO
A website alone is not enough to make your business visible online. Just like your customers need roads to get to your brick-and-mortar business, they need SEO to find your website.
In simplest terms, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) refers to optimizing your website’s visibility online. More people seeing your website can lead to increased traffic and ultimately more customers. You increase your website’s visibility by communicating to search engines that your site is authoritative and trustworthy.
Google doesn’t reveal its exact formula for how your site is ranked. However, between Google’s tips and input from SEO experts, we know there are several basics to how SEO works. Some of the key elements of SEO include your website keywords, content, site architecture, links from other sources, and the location of the searcher.
5 Benefits of SEO For Your Business
Whether your business is decades old or just starting out, SEO is key to your online success. Maintaining an SEO-enriched website is inexpensive in the grand scheme of your business, and it contributes to your bottom line considerably over time.
1. Become More Visible to Customers
Organic search is the primary source of website traffic. Your website appears organically in search as a result of what terms the searcher used. Your potential customers are seeking out your product or service, which is why keyword research matters on your site. A website with helpful, in-depth content developed around strategic keywords will have better organic rankings for those keywords.
A customer can’t engage with your business if they are not aware of you. Good SEO helps more potential customers see you and engage with your website. Being highly visible as a trusted resource by Google works in your favor.
2. Stand Out Locally
Local SEO refers to your visibility within a geographical location. Google considers where a user is searching from in order to provide them with the most relevant results. For example, someone searching for an electrician in Nashville would not be shown results for electricians in Dallas.
Local SEO leads to increased engagement, web traffic, and conversions because it connects your business to customers in your area. This aspect of SEO is a fundamental part of success for small businesses.
A good overall SEO strategy should benefit your visibility in local search results. Emphasis on off-page SEO tactics like improving your Google reviews and building links on directory sites can also help.
3. Better Understand Your Customers
One of the benefits of SEO is that it’s an excellent way to understand your customers. Conducting keyword research for your industry helps you determine which questions they are asking and which benefits they care about the most. You can use this information to build out your website so that it meets their needs and becomes more visible to them in search results.
Once a potential customer is aware of your business, there are different stages of the buying cycle. SEO helps you reach your customers at the exact right time. For example, content with long-tail keywords has a higher potential to reach more informed customers who may be closer to a purchase.
4. Build Trust & Credibility
Good SEO leads to a better user experience. User experience (UX) is how your visitors interact with your website. Good UX results in more clicks, an increase in traffic, and ultimately improved SEO. Google knows how to interpret if a website offers a good or poor user experience, so a positive user experience is a crucial component of SEO.
A positive user experience is the result of your website providing several things — clear communication that the visitor is in the right place, easy navigation, and a natural flow from one action to the next. According to Stanford research, 75 percent of people make judgments on a business’s credibility based on website design. People are more likely to do business with someone they trust, and your website is often the first impression they get.
If you deliver what customers are looking for, you become a trusted source they can depend on. Google takes note of this and ranks your site more favorably. Over time, as positive UX improves SEO, your website should rank higher organically in search engine results pages (SERPs) — which builds even more trust and credibility with your potential customers.
5. Enjoy Cost-Effective, Long-Term Results
Your website is your number one digital marketing asset, and your SEO efforts positively impact your brand awareness. In the long run, it pays to not just have a website but to have one that can be found by search engines. Basic SEO best practices can help you achieve this, and they often hold weight for long periods of time. And like most things, the benefits of SEO only improve with more attention and investment.
Does Every Business Need SEO?
Regardless of your industry, if you have a website, you need SEO. If Google can’t find your website, then your customers never will. And if you don’t have a website, you need one. Not having a website makes potential customers trust you less.
There are many things about your business that you can’t control, such as new competitors, economic conditions, etc. But, you can control your online presence and the resources you put into it. Investing in your website and SEO is investing in your business’s visibility and profitability. As long as your efforts are consistent and you follow best practices, you can expect to reap the rewards.
All of our Best Websites are designed with SEO best practices in mind, so you don’t have to do the work. If you’re interested in learning more, schedule a call with one of our team.