SEO is the commonly used acronym for Search Engine Optimisation. In essence it involves a set of activities and techniques that attempt to enhance search engine rankings. It is aimed at ensuring that a website ranks highly in search engine results returned from particular keywords and phrases relevant to the site and its offering. Essentially, if a business wants to promote its presence online and gain more relevant leads, SEO is the way to go.
This article looks at the primary advantages of capitalising on the benefits of SEO, and how these can be tapped into to help grow your business.
Increased traffic
For companies that want to get more clients and stakeholders looking at their sites, the top positions on search engine results receive the most visits (especially pages 1 to 3). So if you manage to get your website to appear in a prime search engine position such as the top 5 results of page 1, for instance, it would mean more traffic for your website. This translates to more opportunities for relevant leads and conversions into sales. SEO is also concerned with ‘keyword relevant title tags and meta descriptions,’ which show up in the results pages. This increases the click-through rate of the site and the quality of the search.
Return on investment
With the development of community management and analytics software such as Tweet Deck for Twitter and others, it is now easier to monitor and get trackable, quantifiable results irrespective of the type of website you have (e.g. e-commerce versus non-e-commerce platforms). These resources can assist businesses in assessing the minutest of details such as how customers interacted with their website or even a specific page or call-to-action. This enables pattern and trend recognition as well as useful data collation, which can be used as a guide for necessary changes in web design, service offerings and so on. This has proven most useful when it comes to determining customer buying habits. Knowing how to make the buying process of your website easier will, for example, increase sales among other benefits.
Cost effectiveness
SEO is one of the most cost-effective marketing approaches because it targets users who are actively seeking your products and services on the Internet. As SEO is inbound in nature, businesses save money which they typically use for outbound and traditional strategies, such as cold-calling. Since SEO primarily targets users who are actively searching for the products and services in question, the web traffic resulting from SEO activities subsequently translates to leads with a high level of relevancy.
Increased site usability
For e-commerce websites such as e-stores, navigating though products and then to the purchasing page has typically been a hassle that frustrates many who then end up not completing the purchase. Offsite and onsite SEO is useful in assessing navigation trends and helps web builders eliminate unnecessary pages and links. This makes the user experience much smoother and maximises chances of closing an online purchase.
Brand awareness
Since SEO ensures that your website is always top-of-mind, customers associate your business with the particular product or service more. This also means that a higher degree of industry authority is attached to the businesses that rank higher, meaning that they are not only more accessible to the masses, but also more trusted by them.
This article covers some of the pivotal ways in which businesses can effectively leverage SEO and its advantages to grow their market share. If you have been looking for a cost-effective and tactical way to expand your enterprise, then consider SEO and content marketing.
Proudly brought to you by the NSBC.