Brick and mortar businesses that are clueless about SEO practices are often shocked whenever their market share dwindles. A new competition with tech savvy teams is taking over due to robust online marketing strategies. They do this by creating cost-effective online infrastructures optimized to capture internet traffic and convert new leads.
By not investing your time and resources in SEO, you risk sending all your traffic away to the competition. SEO marketing is the process of improving certain features of your website to maximize online traffic generated from search engines. The most popular search engines include Google, YouTube, Bing, and Yahoo.
You could be losing money if your website is not optimized for search engines. If you haven’t caught on to the trend of online SEO strategies, perhaps reading this blog will change your mind.
1- Organic Search Is the Primary Source of Traffic
Organic search contributes to about 70 percent of traffic to websites compared to paid advertisements. Think of search engines as giant funnels that increase brand awareness about your products and ultimately guide consumers to complete a transaction on your website.
Google controls an enormous portion of the search market than its Yahoo, Bing, and DuckDuckGo counterparts – about 75 percent to be exact. This means that your SEO strategy should begin with Google before targeting other search engines. The remaining 25 percent of the market is valuable to your brand too.So when you have spare resources, it would be worth making small tweaks to grab some traffic from them.
The vast majority of the world utilizes Google at least once a day to get their information. By targeting specific keywords and ranking high for them, you should be able to target a broader audience that may not respond to conventional forms of advertising.
2- Content Marketing
2.1- Helps You Capture Keywords
Marketing your keywords requires you to write blogs and articles about your niche. This demonstrates to search engines and users alike that your website is an authority on the subject. Once you have a fair share of content on the internet about a specific niche, Google will start giving you increased domain authority. This means that any subsequent posts will stand a stronger chance of jumping to the first page of search results.
Make sure that your content isn’t a random mesh of garbled words with a few target keywords thrown in for good measure. The blog posts should resonate well with the target audience and should be informative. Start by defining your target audience and then curate a story for them. You don’t want your content to be too difficult to comprehend.
A good trick to grab audience attention is to write your content based on what interests your customers the most. The content should create value, and if your audience enjoys what you’ve written, they will convert from leads into loyal customers. If you’re unsure what keywords you should be searching for, consider visiting Google’s Keyword Planner to find helpful pointers.
2.2- Backlinking Is More Valuable Than You Can Possibly Imagine
Google prioritizes the number of backlinks above all else. Backlinks are when third-party websites source directly to your website. They could do this if they like your content and want to share it with their viewers. When search engines see this, it tells them two things:
1- Your content is valuable enough to be seen as share-worthy
2- Trustworthy people find your content to be relevant enough
This gives you greater domain authority and helps you rank higher for search queries. It is extremely important to have high-quality links. It is important to stay vigilant because of the way Google has structured its backlinking system. You can’t expect anything good to come out of underhanded tactics such as spammy links. High-quality backlinks contribute up to 80% toward the SEO strategy for your website.
Consider guest blogging to credible websites where you can place a CTA leading directly to your website. You can also comment on someone else’s post and add a link to your website. Just make sure that the comment is representing something of value instead of just a blatant excuse for link building. The comment should pique people’s interest enough to lead them to see what you have to say.
Internal Links Increase Average Time Spent on Website
A good internal linking system has been shown to increase SEO ranking and the average time a user spends on your website. Internal links provide search engines with a bird’s eye view of the structure of your website. Such links allow search engines to create a map of your website, making it possible to rank pages based on the value they offer.
Search engines navigate websites by using ‘spiders’ to crawl through link and find pages, posts, and images. Many websites make navigation difficult by hiding their main links, and this hinders their own ability to get featured on search engines.
Imagine your website as a local city with several individual addresses leading to homes and businesses.If the entire database of addresses is not well connected to each other, visitors (spiders) won’t know where to go next for similar businesses (content), and many such addresses will go unnoticed.
2.3- SEO Traffic Converts More Easily
One advantage with SEO is that instead of you going to the customer, the customer is coming to you. This is why there is a higher chance of lead conversion than with traditional advertisements. By increasing your website’s position on search engines, you are winning more customers. This is in stark contrast to advertisements placed billboards, television programs, and even paid search traffic.
Most people frown upon paid advertisements, and they are more likely to rely on local and organic search results.
2.4- SEO Increases Your Sales and Leads
SEO is a powerful way to increase leads and sales if you offer a service or product that people really like. You need to start with a good SEO strategy, which will take time and a little investment. The ideal time for your SEO strategy to bear fruits would be 3 to 6 months. It will not produce results overnight, but when it does, it will be worth the time and money spent.
It is possible to double, and even triple, your revenue if you know what you’re doing.
2.5- Build Trust and Credibility
The main goal of using SEO is to create a powerful foundation for a website that is beautiful to look at and provides a clean user interface. Websites with solid SEO strategies in place can easily be discovered by running a few searches on Google and Bing. The website also has a strong presence on social media, all of which builds trust and credibility of the brand.
Establishing yourself as an authority will go a long way toward exposing your brand to other consumers. You should keep in mind that building trust and credibility takes a long time. Presenting yourself as an online authority requires a significant amount of time and resources. Also keep in mind that good SEO also requires a good product or service to back it up, otherwise search engines will see right through your promises.
One of the metrics that Google looks for when determining your website’s rank is the amount of time a customer spends reading your content. If clients exit your website after only a few seconds of visiting, it shows that the content isn’t engaging enough.
It Shows you That There Is a Market for Your Products and Services
Did you know that there are over 40,000 searches being made every second, amounting to over 3.5 billion searches every day? If you are getting more traffic to your website because of SEO practices, it shows that people are actively looking for products and services that you are offering. This presents a world of opportunity to connect with these people and boost your bottom line.
The biggest advantage with good SEO is that people are always searching for products on search engines everyday. By optimizing your website, you can attract the best leads to your business. You don’t need advertisements to persuade these people since blogs and articles will suffice.
2.6- Exponentially Better ROI
Let’s consider the math; suppose you buy 100 visitors from a paid search engine, and out of these only 1% decided to convert into a sale.SEO is so effective that it will produce well over 4% more sales from as many visitors. The higher conversion rate can be expected because people are actively looking for your product on search engines.
Clicks from advertisements can be from just about anyone; perhaps someone accidentally clicked on an ad and decided the product wasn’t worth their money. Getting a click from Google is far more valuable than the hit from an ad.
If you continue to refine your SEO strategy, you will be able to bring thousands of visitors to your website every day. The only thing getting in the way of more sales would be if you were to run out of stock.
2.7- Your Competition Is Doing It
How did you become aware about your competition in the first place? Because they are doing good in terms of SEO, which means that every time you write something related to your industry, their name pops up. More businesses will realize the importance of SEO and will try to capture their fair share of internet traffic.
Those who realize this first will get to the top before those who are too late to the party. Learning SEO isn’t as simple as going through a few blogs and calling it a day. Truly understanding SEO requires keeping track of all the changes Google makes to its search algorithms. This isn’t easy for the average business, and chances are, your competition is investing in skilled SEO staff or outsourcing it to the SEO experts who know what they’re doing.
