Search engine optimisation (SEO) has become an invaluable part of the digital marketing strategy of many companies. If your business hasn’t yet looked into boosting its SEO or hiring an SEO management company to do so, here are some of the reasons why investing in SEO is worth the effort.
1. Everyone else is doing it
Let’s start with the obvious. If you choose to skip on SEO and your competitors don’t, you risk lagging behind in your field. More and more average consumers are trusting search results above all else. Even if you run a classic brick-and-mortar business like an auto shop, you may find that consumers are willing to drive longer to reach one of your competitors simply because their website was the first search result when they looked up “auto shop near me”.
According to a 2016 report by Google, 76% of smartphone users who searched for something near their location visited a business within a day. 28% of those searches end up leading to a purchase. And those are relatively old numbers — the rates are likely higher now.
Not every business needs a complex content marketing campaign to boost their SEO across multiple keywords. However, we are approaching a situation where having a professional website that is easy to search and index is no longer optional.
2. Boost organic traffic
Investing in SEO isn’t just a way to keep up. It can actually help you get ahead of your competitors, especially if you run a business that sells goods or services online. Current estimates have it that results on the first page of search results get as much as 92% of the clicks for any given query. Think of your own experience — how often do you check the second page of a page or the fifth?
The supremacy of the first page means that if you can break into the first page of search results relevant to your niche and target audience, you may see the organic traffic of your website go up tenfold overnight, or even more. And that’s a lot of potential extra sales.
3. Improve your website
A lot of the core principles of SEO have to do with making your site more valuable and attractive. Both for search engines and for regular users. This means that investing in a professional SEO campaign will often lead you to make your site better for other customers as well, which can knock out two birds with one stone. For example, making your site load faster, adding more useful content, making it easier to navigate, and making it work better across multiple devices are all things an SEO agency will either encourage you to do or take care of themselves.
4. Gain more authority
The average internet user puts a lot of weight into a site’s ranking. If your site was the first result for a search — or on the first page — they often assume it’s a serious site run by a competent company. And while that may sound vague, what it translates to in practice is that ranking higher leads to not only more organic traffic, but also to better organic traffic. To an inflow of visitors who are more likely to trust your brand and its products.
It’s worth noting that having a low ranking can also have a similar effect. It doesn’t inspire confidence when you try to look up a company by its name, and the brand’s official website isn’t even the first result on a search for the company’s name.
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