The digital landscape has changed how businesses operate, and having a strong presence in organic search results is crucial for your success. 82% of marketers noticed a positive impact of the right SEO strategy on their marketing efforts. This is why your business needs SEO.
Search engine optimization is a sustainable and cost-effective method for studying your customers and addressing their pain points at key moments. It helps boost your search engine rankings, build brand credibility, and generate more targeted organic search traffic and leads for your business.
This article highlights the importance of search engine optimization (SEO) and provides 10 compelling reasons why your business needs it.
Why Should You Invest in an SEO Strategy Today?
Here are a few reasons why investing in a solid SEO strategy is right for your business:
1. Search engine optimization leads to increased website traffic
SEO increases your website’s visibility in the search engine result pages (SERPs) for relevant keywords and search queries. Leveraging on-page SEO, off-page SEO, and technical SEO practices raises your site’s competitiveness and helps your pages rank higher on Google and other search engines.
Statistics show that 53% of all website traffic originates from organic search results, meaning you can use targeted long-tail keywords and local keywords to drive more traffic. This is why your business needs SEO to drive more high-quality traffic, increasing chances of conversion and sales.
Several case studies also attest to the effectiveness of SEO services in increasing a site’s online visibility and generating more traffic.
2. Good SEO also means a good user experience
In search experience optimization (SXO), you combine SEO principles with user experience (UX) to develop a website that appeals to your users and search engines.
By optimizing websites with the internet users in mind, you focus on providing them with a seamless journey from when people search for your products or services online to their overall interaction with your website.
One way you can optimize your website for improved user experience is by making it mobile-friendly, noting that 64% of web searches come from mobile phones. This, along with optimizing your content and page speed, increases user engagement and boosts your organic rankings and conversion rate.
3. SEO helps build brand credibility and trust
Tapping into the best SEO techniques, such as creating content that provides value to your target audience and building authoritative backlinks, establishes your brand as a niche authority. It helps showcase your expertise and build credibility.
Investing in SEO helps your website rank higher on SERPs for relevant queries, attracting potential customers and clicks.
For example, when you create informative and relevant content on topics related to your industry, you establish yourself as a credible information source. Your customers will keep coming back because they value your content.
Ensure your SEO strategies are in sync to hold customers’ attention in exchange for their loyalty. This boosts your brand’s online image, helping you remain competitive in your industry.
4. Optimizing for the search engines delivers better ROI than other marketing channels
Organic search is a sure way to earn you a higher ROI of 49% compared to other digital marketing channels.
Here’s also a SEJ survey showing how SEO dominates the ROI charts among top digital marketing channels:
This tells you how valuable your SEO efforts are in online success.
Though SEO is a marathon, not a sprint, you can leverage it to grow your business and skyrocket your revenues. For example, Stratabeat, a B2B growth agency, used a targeted SEO strategy to increase their monthly organic traffic value by $682,088 in three years. Their organic traffic grew by 7,235.7%.
Unlike PPC, you don’t pay for every user’s click on your paid search result. SEO is a cost-effective marketing strategy that provides long-term, sustainable benefits and returns.
You target keywords that focus on each stage of your customer’s buying funnel, helping attract more customers.
5. SEO helps you attract your potential customers
Think about this for a moment. Say your website sells vegan products, and a potential customer searches for vegan protein powder online. How, then, do you organically attract this customer to your site? The answer lies in doing SEO.
Content marketing is a crucial part of a solid SEO strategy. In a recent survey, an overall content strategy accounted for 16.7% in effectiveness compared to other SEO strategies, followed by topic clustering (also a part of content creation).
To leverage SEO content to attract your potential customers, you first need to understand user behavior – find out how they search for products and solutions and what info they’re looking for.
Identify relevant keywords people search for. Ranking for these queries enables you to drive not just traffic but quality leads that are genuinely interested in your products/services.
However, to rank for these keywords, ensure your content is high-quality, authoritative, helpful, and optimized for conversions. Also, optimize your website for mobile devices as 59.7% of global web traffic originates from mobile devices.
6. You can influence buying decisions with content valued by search engine algorithms
Lead generation and driving profitable consumer behavior are other reasons why your business needs SEO. You should understand that most consumers don’t make spontaneous purchasing decisions. You need to show up in relevant search results to lead them through the buyer’s journey.
The buyer starts with a pain point. So, when they search online for ways to alleviate this pain, they are looking for content that precisely addresses that. 71% of buyers expect you to customize your content and meet their needs.
So, your content’s goal here is to help buyers and build trust. Once they find your content helpful, they’ll 131% more likely to buy from you.
7. Local SEO is a blessing for small businesses
Local SEO recommends your business in Google search engine results pages (SERPs) to your prospective local clients. Simply put, it works for your business when you aren’t.
Say someone searches on Google for a “Dentist near me.” Google displays the dentist clinics nearby. However, you need to create a Google Business profile to rank for local keywords.
Monthly “near me” search results stand at 1.5 billion, with 28% leading to a purchase. So, local SEO directly impacts local business footfall and conversions.
Besides Google, promote your business in other local channels your consumers frequent. Here are some channels consumers use to fetch local business information:
Optimize your local business trust signals, which influence your consumer’s buying decisions. The leading trust signals are photos, Google reviews, and SERP positions.
For example, here’s a 2024 survey showing that at least 75% of people always and regularly read online reviews when searching for local businesses.
8. Ranking in search engine results pages brings quantifiable results
Use SEO tools such as Ahrefs, Semrush, and Google Analytics to measure the success of your SEO campaigns. This helps you determine whether your SEO strategy is working and which metrics outperform the others.
Let’s look at the key metrics you should track.
- Website traffic growth: Analyzing your website traffic helps you figure out if your site’s visibility is increasing in the search engine result page for relevant keywords.
- Keyword rankings and SERP positions: Assess where your web pages rank for relevant keywords in your niche, including short and long-tail keywords.
- Average time spent on your web pages: Use this metric to examine if your content meets your user’s search intent and expectations. A high bounce rate signifies that you need to fix your content issues.
- Referral traffic growth: Determine the amount of traffic you receive from backlinks and other referring domains. Ensure the sources are of high quality.
- Conversions and sales: The final goal is to convert the traffic and leads you drive through SEO. It helps assess the effectiveness of your SEO efforts in your business growth.
9. SEO is relatively more cost-effective than other digital marketing strategies
Just like the best things in life, SEO doesn’t break your bank. It is a rather inexpensive way to generate targeted traffic and leads for your business, and gives great returns in the long run.
SEO services pricing is variable based on your business goals, your target keywords, and their competitiveness. On average, small businesses spend <$500 per month on optimizing for the search engines.
10. SEO is a long-term growth strategy
Though you begin to notice positive results within 3-6 months of implementing an effective SEO strategy, your gains are long lasting.
It’s worth noting that the more competitive your industry, the longer your SEO efforts will take to yield results. This is because it takes more effort to outrank established brands in competitive industries in search results. So, an optimal long-term SEO strategy propels you past the competition hurdles and raises your chances of meeting your goals.
The beauty of search engine optimization lies in the fact that it is scalable and doesn’t significantly lose value over time if you follow current SEO trends and updates.
SEO is here to stay. However, certain outdated SEO tactics won’t work anymore.
Ready to Boost Your Search Engine Results Rankings and Business Growth?
Your business needs to rank high on Google and other search engines to increase web traffic, generate better ROI, get qualified leads, and build brand credibility and trust.
Picture this: Your next customer is probably online now searching for products you sell. What do you think happens if they can’t locate you on the search engines? They buy from your competitors or other local businesses. That’s how you miss out on a sale and repeat orders.
To succeed in the current digital market, you need to do search engine optimization (SEO) to get new customers and boost brand awareness. The best way to do it effectively is to leverage our custom SEO services tailored to your business keywords and goals. Book a call today!