Marketing in 2022 is a core function for business and digital marketing is a predictable part of marketing strategy. A competitive digital marketplace, a mobile-first consumer, and an online ecosystem make it difficult for the business to survive without a digital strategy. This means businesses operate through websites, social media, and digital ads as the core of the strategy. However, SEO remains the unsung hero that most organizations still haven’t uncovered. If you’re an entrepreneur still asking, “Is SEO right for my business?”, then read on to learn the benefits of SEO for business.
Marketers think SEO works
Hubspot’s State of Marketing Research in 2021 shares that 83% of marketers believe that their website enables them to achieve their marketing goals. Around 75% of marketers find SEO effective in achieving these goals.
A brightedge report further adds that 53.3% of all website traffic comes from organic search. Organic search is the un-paid search results delivered by a search engine. Thus, out of all the traffic on your website, half is there only because a search engine (Google) mapped your business to a customer requirement.
Since 2022 began, Google received 91.56% of all the internet search volume. Most customers search for products /services via smartphones. Thus, ensuring your website reaches a customer becomes even more important. Here’s a glimpse into the importance of SEO for brand building. You can read all about how SEO helps build brands and businesses in various ways.
Is SEO right for my business?
While the business statistics may hold, every marketing spend is eventually evaluated based on ROI. Let’s understand why to invest in SEO.
1. Our website gets a lot of traffic – Do I need to invest in SEO?
Often that traffic coming on to your website is from a paid effort. That is called SEM – Search Engine Marketing or from your social media efforts. Consider the Bright Edge report above. Most businesses have traffic generated from organic or SEO efforts alone.
In our experience, organic search traffic on your website may have a lower bounce rate and are likely to convert more. Often consumers that come via organic search are users actively looking for a content, product, or service your business has to offer. Thus, the conversions are higher.
Before considering an investment in SEO, visit the analytics dashboard to understand the source of your website audience. If you are experiencing a higher bounce rate on your visits or low traffic altogether, it is high time to activate SEO efforts. So why invest in SEO? Invest in SEO to generate quality traffic, leads, and conversions on your website. While you may consider doing SEO internally, here are 7 Important reasons to outsource it.
2. We are active on social media and get many inquiries – Should I invest in SEO?
Social media is a vast pool of target audiences. What you need to ask is whether those inquiries are converting? Networking is so open today that, the proverbial ‘PP?’ in the comments or the DMs must feature. However, this is not a qualified lead. Qualified leads visit your business online or offline in the prospect of a sale.
Your customers will visit your website if they avidly follow your page. This is where social media drives traffic to your site. This number is not that high, though. Secondly, the business needs to evaluate this footfall to the online or offline store. Are they window shopping or serious buyers?
SEO complements social media marketing efforts. Your customers share favorite brand websites on social media. This is as good as creating a backlink – even though it has a no-follow attribute. It makes your website searchable. Another user discovers your brand website and may include it on their website or pages – this then becomes a credible backlink that boosts page rankings.
Social media marketing enables brand discovery and awareness. But it is the search engine that offers your product as the solution to those queries online. Why invest in SEO if social media marketing is active? Because both efforts can bring value traffic from various sources.
3. We developed a great-looking and functioning website – Does the website still need SEO?
That sounds great! One of the keys to driving traffic and creating rich online experiences is a good UX/ UI design with high functionality. Here is where SEO contributes. The content on your website is what will engage customers and encourage buying. If the user can’t find what they’re looking for in the first 10 seconds, they drop out of your website.
Thus, SEO tactics of creating high-quality content, ensuring tags are maintained, text, and images placement help in keeping the website up-to-date with Google Page Experience Update
Most website developers create SEO-supported websites. This is a basic hygiene SEO implementation, such as getting the meta tags right, indexing the pages, and more. To drive a continuous stream of customers on your website, SEO becomes crucial to the marketing efforts. Keyword ranking, optimizing content, adding more content to establish credibility, link building, keep your website up-to-date with the best practices. Thus, ensuring that your website is ranking on the first pages of Google.
4. Website receives traffic from all over the country, but brand awareness lacking among local customers – Can SEO help?
YES! Local search is everything right now. Customers are always searching for local places to eat, services, businesses, and access maps. Start with creating a Google My Business Page for your brand. Then work towards constantly optimizing the listing.
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SEO helps elevate your local business in and around your neighborhoods and builds brand awareness. So, a continuous effort to have customers review your business is required. Responding to customer queries, talking about your business with the right keywords, and ensuring it features when customers look for your service.
Local SEO channels efforts into bringing your website and business to the forefront in a competitive space. This means your business will also need listings and reviews on other platforms, besides google. It may seem easy to set up a free GBP listing and it is. But maintaining it continuously, updating it, and managing it is all part of the SEO effort.
5. Isn’t it just another marketing expense and the returns are slow – how do I justify SEO for my business?
SEO is an expense, but unlike social media marketing, it is not exorbitant. SEO is not about ads or a time-bound campaign or a display campaign. It is about investing in building a long-term strategy for your website. It is about building authenticity and trust for your website. The investment in SEO comes from expertise and experience put into optimizing the website. The benefits of a well-executed custom SEO strategy extend beyond the time and money invested. SEO tactics work towards delivering a user experience, which means growing a customer base that returns to your website organically.
Again, SEO unlike paid search does not show immediate results. SEO tactics are a series of cumulative efforts implemented to drive sustainable growth. It takes anywhere between 6 – 12 months to see the full effect of SEO kick into your website. By then, the website has amazing content that brings customers back. You’ve optimized the experience with excellent images and user-friendly navigation. The sustained keyword research and technical SEO keep your website ranking on the first page of search results. Sometimes, even after you’ve stopped actively working on SEO.
Is an investment in SEO worth it?
A resounding yes. If you’re looking to build a long-term growth strategy and want to sustain it, SEO is worth the time and money for any business. Some organizations choose to do it in-house thinking it’s closer to the business so executed better. However, recruiting an SEO agency in Mumbai helps businesses leverage the knowledge of SEO experts. Businesses must change their outlook toward SEO. Look at it from a perspective of driving maximum value out of SEO, rather than what is the sales return on this expense. As a digital marketing agency in Mumbai, we work with several large and small businesses to create holistic digital marketing strategies. Our SEO experts work towards specific and measurable goals that brands aim to achieve.
