Why Is SEO Important for Every Business?

One of the biggest breakthroughs in marketing in recent years has been search engine optimization. Businesses have moved from 'broadcasting' a generic message through one-way communication to a more involved communication platform through SEO.

Not only that, SEO has been the preferred method to get people interested in your brand. Estimates show more than 44% of companies use SEO to draw high-quality leads. With competition heating up in all industries, SEO has been able to prove the definitive advantage businesses need.

Here are a few ways SEO can help improve margins for any business.

See How SEO Drives Success for All Businesses

1.   Drives Targeted Traffic

The biggest headache for any business is to obtain high-quality leads over a long period of time. With SEO, this problem has been almost completely eliminated!

Using SEO, marketers are able to bank on high-intent search queries from users. High-intent here means something that encourages a user to take action.

Another advantage is that SEO can help users get results that are related to their search. For businesses, SEO ensures that website content has relevant keywords that are pushed to the top of search results.

These can ensure that your website attracts qualified leads and spends less time in the marketing funnel. One of the upsides of using SEO - is reduced ad spends!

2.   Improves Website Accessibility

An area of marketing that traditional marketing methods don't touch on is accessibility. Websites need to load faster to secure a much higher rank on search results.

Also, remember when you accessed a website from your mobile device, the fonts either appeared too small or large?

Well, with the advent of mobile-friendly design, all that is done away with for good!

One of the vital aspects of SEO is that websites need to be strictly optimized for mobile platforms. This means a more consistent appearance and website behavior when a user switches from their computer to mobile.

SEO also ensures that websites are easy to navigate for users and has features to help users with disabilities.

3.   Better Organic Visibility

Improving organic visibility for a business is vital to its success. Imagine a situation where your website is ranked at the top for related queries that is exactly what the user is looking for.

That is exactly what you can get with organic visibility. Better scores in this area can lead to higher rankings of search results.

A tangible benefit of ranking high organically is that you can afford to skip those expensive paid ads!

While organic results still won't replace top paid spots from some search engines, the first organic search result still has more power over ads. Studies show that a staggering 94% of users click organic results compared to paid ads.

4.   Stronger Brand Authority

When you're in a highly competitive niche, you need to pull out all the stops to ensure that you rank above your competitors. One such metric is brand authority.

High brand authority ensures that your business is trusted by users and other players in the market. A high authority website has trustworthy backlinks from reputable industry sources that can add value for your users.

SEO helps improve brand authority through curated content creation. It focuses on creating content of all types that can help and support users in the niche. High-quality content can also create positive user engagement resulting in better credibility in the industry.

5.   Break Into Newer Markets

As marketplaces become more crowded and competition heats up, it can be difficult for businesses to reach new demographics. This problem is exacerbated when it's a new business! But with SEO, even new players have a chance to level against their more entrenched competition.

SEO focuses on hyper-localized keyword targeting which can get results from within neighborhoods.

Businesses can also include the cultural aspect of a particular location in their content to get more people talking about them.

The most common use of culture is through festivals and holidays. SEO tools can also provide a competitive gap analysis. These can highlight areas in marketing where your competition has not optimized their campaign.

6.   Empowers Global Expansion

With more coverage and improved logistics, every business today has the potential to become a global player. One of the keys to worldwide expansion for a business is quality SEO.

SEO can optimize websites to be easily translatable and have unique layouts that perform better in specific locations.

Modern SEO campaigns also offer a much better reach, helping international domains to better target their customers.

SEO can also improve cross-border audience reach which results in new leads and higher conversion rates. Rather than having to rely on expensive paid marketing techniques, SEO can offer a much better price-to-performance ratio.

7.   Synergistic With Social Media

Social media is a veritable powerhouse when it comes to varied demographics.

With more than 4 billion people and counting on at least one social media platform, it only shows signs of getting even larger. But that said, with the volume of posts on social media, as a business, you can't simply post something and expect it to go viral on its own. This is where SEO comes in!

SEO is the perfect tool for businesses to interface with this massive platform. It ensures that content is optimized specifically for different types of social media feeds increasing the chances of it being shared.

Key Takeaways

• Focus on thorough keyword research, this forms the basis of your future marketing process.
• Improving load times can have a tangible effect on your SERPs. Google considers page speed a ranking signal!
• Create high-quality content - don't use mediocre content just to fill a calendar.
• Audit your backlinks and do it on a regular basis. Bad backlinks can play havoc on your business.
• Leverage SEO tools to help you track and measure your success.