Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has never been more important. It’s a key tool in your marketing strategy and a cost effective way of reaching potential customers. But how exactly does it drive business growth? Here, we’ll explain the benefits of SEO and how it can unlock business potential.
Unlocking Business Potential with SEO
Put simply, the difference is the target audience. Whilst business-to-customer (B2C) marketing involves communicating directly with your consumer, B2B is all about business-to-business.
There are many ways that SEO will help with business growth. Here are our top 10 reasons why SEO works for small businesses like yours.
Increasing Online Visibility
In a nutshell, search engine optimization improves your online visibility. Better visibility online means more website traffic, and that traffic can be converted to sales, leads, revenue and business growth.
These days, when you want to solve a problem or get a question answered, you tend to ask a search engine like Google, Bing or Yahoo. If your business can provide the answer to the search query, and your website appears on page one of the SERP, the searcher’s more likely to click through to your website to find out how you can help.
Connects You with the Right Audience
Your website doesn’t appear randomly in search engine results pages. There’s a very exact science and algorithm behind it. Your aim is to appear in relevant search results – ie the things that your potential customers are searching for. You don’t need to be visible to everyone, just those people searching for whatever your business offers. Good SEO helps you to reach new customers online.
As an example, say you have a business selling vegan beauty products. If you tailor your content to ensure it gets higher rankings for search terms like ‘vegan shampoo’ or ‘cruelty free make up’ it’s more likely to be seen by people interested in vegan beauty products.
Generates Quality Leads for Your Website
An effective SEO strategy involves keyword research to determine the search queries that your potential customers are likely to use. By incorporating those relevant keywords in your website, you have a higher probability of being found by the people who are most likely to engage with your business.
By doing your research and using relevant keywords, you’ll be attracting the right people to your website. The people most likely to engage with your business. These are high quality leads. Research shows that SEO is better than other marketing strategies, including PPC, for generating leads.
Facilitates Lead Conversion
SEO isn’t directly about having a user-friendly website, but it is a factor. Google prioritises high quality content that people engage with. So, ensuring that your website provides a great user experience and delivers engaging content that people stick around to use, will result in better ranking as well as lead conversion rates.
People are much more likely to buy from, or engage with, a website that appears trustworthy. It’s important to build trust with your users, and make them feel safe enough to contact you, click through to more pages or make a purchase.
Elevates Brand Recognition
By getting your business and its website seen by more people, SEO can boost brand awareness. People become more familiar with your brand, the more often they see it online. Even if they don’t click on your website when it appears in their search results, they’ll see the name. When they see it again, say on social media, it’s already known to them and they’re more likely to engage with it.
Builds Trust and Credibility
We mentioned earlier that search engines like to rank websites with high quality content. They also want the content to be from an authoritative source – a site people can trust to be truthful.
When your website ranks highly (on the first page of SERP), people view it as credible and have more trust in it. If your site ranks well for industry-related terms, it can be deemed an authority in that field. This is a win-win as you’ll benefit from better promotion from Google and better responses from users.
Delivers Long-Term Benefits
Unlike paid advertising, SEO continues to deliver a return on investment ongoing. It doesn’t end when a campaign finishes. Think of SEO as a long term strategy. You may find a web page continues to rank well long after its initial creation and optimization with a relatively small amount of updating.
Local SEO to Expand Your Local Business
Even though a website is visible worldwide, it’s also an incredibly useful tool to connect with your target audience in a local area. Local businesses need local customers. Local SEO strategies can help you to reach them. For example, if you’re a hairdresser in Liverpool then you need to reach people nearby who want a haircut.
A starting point for your local SEO strategy is to create a Google My Business account. That will be a big factor in getting your local business found on both Google search and maps. Ask your customers to write reviews too as that will increase your online presence.
Optimize your content for local search, using relevant keywords to tell your audience exactly who and where you are. Don’t forget to include your address and contact details. Focus on specific locations, neighbourhoods and towns to connect your brand with the area. Create listings in local directories and incorporate backlinks to add SEO value. These are known local ranking factors which will increase your online presence to a local audience.
Measurable ROI and Business Growth
SEO is so much more measurable than traditional marketing. Using platforms like Google Analytics, you can drill down into the data to analyse performance. You’ll see detailed information about your website traffic, conversions and user behaviour. You can discover the most popular keyword searches and which web pages get the most visitors. By tracking performance, you can make informed, data-driven decisions for your business. You can determine exactly where you need to spend more time and resource, and it will reveal potential opportunities for your business.
Integrating SEO into Your Business Strategy
SEO should be a key pillar in your digital marketing strategy. It needs to be ‘always on’ to ensure content is updated regularly and contains relevant keywords to gain higher rankings on search engines.
SEO is generally a lower cost than many traditional marketing channels. However, SEO works in synergy with other marketing channels like social media and advertising, extending the brand awareness and messaging online.
SEO integrates seamlessly with your overall business strategy to drive growth sustainably and long term. With increasing amounts of our lives being spent online, your business needs to be visible on the platforms where your customers spend time.
How we can help with your SEO?
SEO is the key to getting your website found by potential customers. Online visibility is a powerful factor in long-term sustainable business growth. By investing in SEO, you can build credibility and trust with your target audiences and encourage them to engage with your brand. You’ll generate new leads, boost conversion rates and, ultimately, revenue. This makes it an integral part of any digital marketing strategy.
We’re here to help you with SEO. We’re highly experienced in delivering tangible results for local, national and international businesses. Call us for a for a free discovery call to see how SEO can drive your business forward.