Top 8 Benefits of SEO for Your Business’ Bottom Line
You’re still skeptical about the benefits of SEO. We get it. We get it all the time from small business owners and CEOs. Still. In spite of SEO having been around for what feels like forever. In spite of ongoing evidence that SEO can bolster, and boost, your business immeasurably. In spite of statistics like the following, all of which point, with big glaring red arrows, to the importance of SEO in getting your business positioned to succeed in an increasingly online world:
- 63,000 searches are performed on Google every second (SEO can help you get found in those searches);
- 39% of all global e-commerce traffic comes from search (SEO can help your product get found, and your business nab some of that);
- 93% of all online experiences begin with a search engine (see bullet number one…);
- Nearly 80% of users ignore paid ads in search results (SEO drives organic search results).
Why the ongoing skepticism then? For one thing, to many, achieving the benefits of SEO still seems like rocket science. As Danny Sullivan, co-founder of Search Engine Land, once put it: “SEO is only not seen as rocket science by those who already know it.” For another, SEO is a long-term commitment, an ongoing, ever-changing science that can feel like a lot of work for something so… invisible. Thirdly, SEO is still seen by many as sorcery of a sort.
The truth is, SEO is all of those things: a science; a long-term commitment to something somewhat invisible; a seemingly-magical solution to getting found on search engines. It is also none of those things: unlike rocket science, with the right tools and a bit of research SEO and its accompanying best practices are quite accessible; the results are measurable and far from invisible; SEO tools, practices, implementations and strategies, far from being sorcery, are mostly just simple common sense.
What’s more, in a world where 5.6 billion searches are performed on Google per day, which equals 228 million searches per hour, 3.8 million searches per minute, and 63,000 searches per second (SearchEngineLand), if you’re not able to stand out from the crowd and actually get found in those searches, you’re dead in the (worldwide) water. SEO can help with that.
SEO is necessary. A necessary evil you might think, but fortunately for you, there are those of us who love the strategizing and challenges that SEO presents. Which is why, in something of an ode to SEO, we’ve outlined our top 8 benefits of SEO and how it can help your business.
1. SEO = Better User Experience
There’s an old saying in the world of consumer-related business: “The customer is always right.” Other iterations of this old chestnut could be “The customer comes first.” “The customer’s needs are king.” “What the customer wants, the customer gets.”
In terms of your business, and your online presence, this means you need to focus on what your customer wants to know, see, buy… and then deliver. As SEO and digital marketing author Winston Burton puts it, “These days, a practitioner of search engine optimization is more of a content experience analyst … it’s all about building high-quality, useful, intent-based content for all stages of the buyer journey so as to be there in a consumer’s moment of need.”
Let’s repeat that: “it’s about building high-quality, useful, intent-based content…”
User (customer) intent, and the user (customer) experience, must come first if you want to win at the click game.
More than that, that high-quality, honest, useful, intent-based content needs to be easy to find, easy to navigate, quick to load, engaging, captivating, relevant… That’s right, customers have always been a tricky, demanding bunch. Now add in ever-changing, ever-eagle-eyed, prone-to-penalize-you search engines, and you’ve got a double dose of ‘do things right or else’.
Fortunately, the benefits of SEO can help on both fronts: by following SEO best practices, not only will you make your website easier to navigate for the search engines, those same SEO best practices simultaneously help to make your website more navigable for users.
SEO can benefit improve on user experience on your site in the following ways:
- Inclusion of relevant content
- Inclusion of related photos or videos to support text,
- Site architecture rearrangement for easy-to-navigate web pages
- Mobile-friendly website configuration
- Relevant internal linking
- Increased page load speed
Bottom line is this: sound SEO strategies can benefit help create a faster, sleeker, cleaner, leaner, smoother, more user-friendly website. This not only makes it easier for search engines to find and love you, and serve you up as the answer to all your customers’ questions, needs and wants, it also makes it easier for those customers to love you once they’re there.
2. SEO = Better Brand Awareness and Credibility
This is a really simple premise: if search engines see you, search engine users see you. Ta da: brand awareness.
Search engine users, a.k.a., your customers, have learned to trust sites on the first page of search engine results pages (SERPs) more than sites lurking on page 2 or worse. Whether this is pure laziness, a good Google education, or an innate understanding that brands on page 1 care enough to do the work to place themselves there and will thus care enough to do the work to make them, the customer, happy, makes little difference.
If you want your brand front and centre, trusted and used by customers, you need to be front and centre on search engines, i.e., on page 1 of SERPs. The many benefits of SEO can help put you in these top ranking positions for key terms related to your business, all eyes on you. Eyes on you equals brand awareness.
3. SEO = Better Search Results = Better Traffic
Organic search continues to play a huge role in the success, or lack thereof, of your website and business. If you’re not featuring on page 1 of SERPs, you’re not featuring at all.
It’s no surprise that top positions on the search engine result pages receive the majority of clicks. In fact, 92% of searchers select businesses on the first page of local search results. Improve your ranking in search results, improve traffic to your website.
Once again, this is a fairly simple premise:
- SEO leads to improved ranking.
- Improved ranking equals visibility.
- Visibility results in traffic.
- Traffic results in leads.
- Leads lead to sales.
- Sales are essential for small business survival.
- SEO started this whole chain.
- SEO is essential for small business survival.
- SEO started this whole chain.
- Sales are essential for small business survival.
- Leads lead to sales.
- Traffic results in leads.
- Visibility results in traffic.
- Improved ranking equals visibility.
SEO does this by focusing on content creation that matches user intent, giving original, relevant answers to the questions your audience is asking, and serving it up in a way that allows search engines to find you and point traffic in your direction. Without SEO serving as that pointer, traffic could go to any one of the manifold websites on the Internet publishing content around your topic or offering.
SEO also helps by ensuring you have relevant title tags and meta descriptions assigned to your website pages, both of which show up in the result pages. It has been well-documented that having optimized tags and descriptions increases click-through rate.
4. SEO = Better Conversion Rates
Websites that load faster, are easy to find, read and surf, and which display properly in almost all types of devices, but most particularly on mobile, are websites that users love.
Websites that load faster, are easy to find, read and surf, and which display properly in almost all types of devices, but most particularly on mobile, are websites that have been SEO-optimized.
Ergo, SEO-optimized websites are websites that users love. And SEO-optimized websites that users love and find easy to use, are websites that see great conversion rates. These are the websites where users become regular visitors, loyal subscribers, money-spending customers.
Search Engine Journal found in one study that an average of 14.6% close or conversion rate is achieved from SEO leads – where the customer performs the actual research of your product or service, compared to 1.7% close leads from outbound or cold leads. You don’t need to be a mathematician to see, and like, those numbers.
5. SEO = Better Than Your Competition
You sell fresh bread. Fred around the corner sells fresh bread. You both love fresh bread. You both make exceptionally delicious fresh bread. But your bread sells out every day. Fred’s bread? It’s still sitting on the shelf by the time he opens up shop tomorrow. And it’s no longer fresh.
What’s the difference? Well, you’ve done some refreshing of your website and upped your local SEO game. Your fresh breads turn heads. All the way off the Internet and into your shop. Customers know about your fresh breads, which means customers can actually visit you and buy said bread. Fred? Well, Fred needs SEO. And to bake new bread.
Not only can SEO help you get your product out the door – be it a physical door or the metaphorical door that is your online store shopping cart – it can also bring new opportunities to light and help you continuously improve your business. Knowing, and understanding, SEO helps you to do better business. It also helps you know, and understand, what your competitors are doing, so that you can do it better.
6. SEO = Better Use of Budget
Studies show that between 80 and 94% of users ignore paid ads in search results and look only at organic results. Why is this? Organic results – results put in top ranking positions thanks to sound SEO practices – are considered more trustworthy than paid ads by search engine users. Think about it in terms of match-fixing: if hockey fans find out somebody paid money for a team to throw the match they’re all up in arms. The best team didn’t win, money won. The same principle applies here: paid ads have a certain whiff about them of companies throwing money at it to buy their way into the customer’s attention. It’s not necessarily the best company, or the best product/solution/answer, it’s just the one which had money.
What’s more, putting trust issues aside and focusing purely on the economics, every single click you get on an organic search result is free. But those paid ads? Every click comes at a price, and the costs add up quickly!
While SEO certainly does cost something, especially in terms of time investment, done well, and maintained properly, your ROI will grow fantastically over time. In terms of SEO vs PPC, SEO is far more sustainable than paid ads and can continue to bring in high-quality traffic forever after.
By targeting users who are already actively searching for your products and services online with quality content and simple technical practices, SEO can generate leads at very little cost. Its inbound nature, as opposed to outbound strategies like cold-calling, direct selling, in-person visits etc., can save you money and time (not to mention the pure agony that is cold-calling).
7. SEO = Better, Trackable, Results
By using tools like Google Search Console and/or Google Analytics, you can quite easily able to track nearly every aspect of your SEO strategy. While the ROI isn’t as obviously trackable as, for example, a Google Ads campaign, you can get into some serious nitty gritty when it comes to tracking what is, and isn’t, working with your SEO.
You can track for things like:
- Rankings
- Traffic
- Conversion
- Demographic information
- Paths taken to purchase or conversion
- Keywords that are, or aren’t, driving traffic to your site
- Lead conversions
- Where you’re losing visitors
- Where you’re gaining visitors
And a whole lot more.
8. SEO = Better Business that Never Sleeps
The beauty of the Internet is that it never sleeps. Your business can stay open 24/7. Of course, you don’t want to have to stay awake, operating and promoting that business, 24/7. Which is where a great SEO strategy comes into play.
Good SEO rankings serve you with 24/7 promotion and your customers with 24/7 service. All while you were sleeping. (Unfortunately, Sandra Bullock and Peter Gallagher don’t come with the standard SEO package.) How’s that for better business?
This doesn’t, however, give you permission to fall asleep on the job. While SEO does offer many benefits for your business – so many – it is a long-term commitment that requires constant monitoring, maintaining, updating, nurturing. Search engines (Google in particular) continue to change the game regularly, and being proactive and monitoring for major algorithm changes is key to maintaining your search engine rankings and SEO success. Make that commitment though, and you will see ongoing positive impact on your business.
1st on the List is consistently rated as a top Search Engine Optimization company by Design Rush as well as Clutch and TopSEOs. If you still have questions about the SEO services, please call our SEO experts here at 1st on the List at 1-888-262-6687.
