Many people have heard the term Search Engine Optimization flipped around more commonly than the 5-dollar-bill. Everywhere you turn you hear, “Looking for better online rankings? It’s SEO”, “Do you want to reach your marketing goals and improve ROIs? SEO is the way to go” and other exciting hype. Many people are beginning to wonder if SEO is not yesterday’s news and maybe no longer a smart investment.
Well, if you have been asking yourself if SEO is a good investment, the short answer would be a resounding, Yes! Affirmative, SEO is critical to the modern business both great and small.
But, be the judge yourself.
In the following article, we have compiled the most important reasons SEO should form an integral part of your marketing efforts today. Take time to consider how your brand could benefit from SEO investment.
Top 5 Reasons SEO is a Valuable Investment to the Modern Business Small and Great.
1. Websites to Target Your Audience
You make think that SEO is just some hocus pocus where ordained adjusters leave libations for the great search engine spirits, but that’s only a very small part of the entire production.
A good portion of SEO work is designed to create an exquisite online experience.
This involves websites that will have the greatest capacity to engage your target audience and attract a dedicated following of visitors.
To do this takes some skill and expertise in building this kind of online fervor. But, the final result pulls a brand from obscurity and introduces it to the exact pool of customers looking for the services and products provided.
Because the website sits at the very heart of your online marketing efforts this is where all the adjustments must begin.
When a website and online presence provides an audience with value, they are far more likely to return and even make recommendations to friends and colleagues. This begins to create an authority for your brand within its marketing niche and brings us to our next important benefit from SEO investment.
2. Build Brand Awareness
As the prominence of your brand within its niche begins to improve the search engines will take notice and begin sending more traffic your way.
This is where an important fact of marketing psychology comes into play. For better or worse, a place first in a list it will get more attention than a business that comes in last place. This fact was exemplified in the days of yore when the phone book was the primary business directory.
Back then, “Zachariah’s Pizzeria” could never compete with “Aaron’s Pizza Shack” simply because of the alphabetical listing.
In the online markets, this truth is taken to a whole new level. Those brands that place high in the search engine’s rankings are considered to be widely respected, highly valuable, and well-established in their industry.
These elements engender feelings of trust and, if done just right, builds familiarity between brand and customer. And these are other factors that play very highly in a customer’s preference of one brand over another – that’s just Marketing Psychology 101.
3. Attract MORE Customers
But, what was mentioned above is only the developmental stages of your long term SEO campaign. It will not be long before the seed matures into a fruit-bearing vineyard and the real benefits of SEO begin to ripen. This will begin with the increased online attention you will be receiving.
Obviously, not every curious visitor who stumbles into your digital market stall is going to be a paying customer, but when beating out the competition, every curious passerby counts.
Furthermore, this initial increase in traffic will further attract the attention of the search engines who endow their SEO adherents with special god-favor – coming up in the next section.
4. Better Conversion Rates
The cherry on the top of your cache of benefits from SEO investment is high-quality targeted traffic. This is when the search engines choose your products and services out of the many for the greatest relevance to the most competitive ranking keywords in your niche.
This means you will be attracting a crowd that has already made their intentions to make business clear by entering their search query.
For example, it isn’t such a stretch of the imagination that a person who enters the keywords “windshield repair the Bronx FAST” is probably in a hurry to find a suitable repairman to fix their vehicle’s windshield in an important NYC borough.
All that is left is to match the customer to the business who can offer the right services, at the right price and in the right time frame. This brings us all the way back to crafting a super-effective website that can close the deal.
Final Notes on SEO Investment
One final thought on the importance of SEO is that the vast majority of customers today perform their searches and make their consumer purchases from information gleaned online.
This means that if there is even the slightest chance that your competition is marketing online and fine-tuning their online presence with SEO, you stand to lose customers and profits as they attract more attention.
