Most business owners will agree that online presence is essential to the business. Being visible and findable online is undoubtedly important. We will help you discover why SEO is so crucial to your business.
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and is all about being organically findable in the search engines. Organic search results are the results in search engines, excluding the advertisements.
Here are 9 reasons why SEO is important to your business.
# 1 Organic search results bring in the most visitors.
You won’t get there with a nice website. It is time for entrepreneurs to understand this. It costs a lot of money, and you can be proud of it, but just a beautiful website is of no use.
If you build a website without online marketing in mind, you actually miss the purpose of a website. A website is online, and what good is it if no one visits your website except a few regular customers?
For most businesses, organic search results will be the largest source of visitors. The better the website is put together, and the questions of visitors answered correctly, the greater the reach. A well-optimized page is shown for more and more searches!
Google, in particular, will play an essential role in this. Searches in the USA are often done in Google. Bing comes in a low 2nd place, and the others follow at a distance. DuckDuck Go is also worth mentioning because it is becoming more and more popular for privacy reasons!
# 2 Local search results are dominated by local, optimized websites
Companies that mainly depend on local customers or clients notice this the most. More and more searches are also getting local search results. Queries related to service are increasingly getting search results with local companies.
Just look for an accountant, physiotherapist, or construction company. If you are not there with your company, you also miss the opportunity for most potential customers.
And the advantage of local search results is low competition. If you don’t have your SEO in order, you will miss many opportunities. Every SMB and Mid-sized company should use SEO, including local SEO!
# 3 The younger, the more digital: SEO is your future
Some business owners get most of their business from regular customers. In that case, I sometimes hear the argument that a website is not that important. And that certainly can be the case, but let’s not forget that the boomers and millennials, in particular, do most of the digital work. And who says that you will not lose your regular customers to a competitor in the long run?
Start-ups often use online well from the start. They know better than anyone that their online footprint is essential for their image and reputation.
Therefore, SEO is important to be easy to find digitally, certainly not only for their name but especially for their products or services.
If you want to get new customers and be future-proof, you can’t ignore SEO.
# 4 All facets of SEO helps build your credibility and trust
Newspapers, television, and social media mentions help people create an ‘image’ of a business, and people come to believe it. And the more often they come across you, the deeper your brand will become. Just think of the millions of people who believe that CNN’s news stories are a reality, even though they have been wrong several times. Even though they have withdrawn the news reports due to untruths, people still believe that certain things were true. This is purely due to the repetition and conviction in the message.
The more often people see your company listed in the search results and in the online publication, the ‘higher’ they estimate your company and the greater the credibility of your product or service.
A well-known saying is: out of sight, out of mind.
That is also true in the digital world. SEO thus improves your credibility by being seen a lot in the search results and articles on well-known websites in your industry.
# 5 SEO is constantly changing
Missing the boat can be because you are simply late, but it can also be because the departure times have been adjusted.
Google and other search engines are constantly changing. New functionalities and functions emerge every few weeks or months. If you don’t do SEO and your competition does, you can miss simple opportunities by lagging in the SEO battle.
Just think of the changes to the Featured Snippets in January 2020, the emergence of Google My Business, the knowledge Panels and so on. Some functions are easy to apply and can give you just that number of new visitors.
If you don’t do SEO, then you know that you are getting further and further behind.
# 6 Understanding SEO gives you better insight into your target audience.
Data in Google Analytics and data in Google Search console give a good picture of your target group. For example, by studying keyword research and data in Google Search Console, you can learn a lot from the behavior of visitors and who they are exactly. If you’re serious about it, you should also set up monthly SEO reporting to track your progress.
Some things that are important to find out or study:
- What issues are there with customers (you can see this from the keywords they use)
- Which words do they use (which keywords).
- Where do they come from (country, region)
- What age group are they in?
- Are they mainly men or women
- What are their interests?
# 7 SEO makes a long-lasting impact.
When you are at the top of Google for a specific keyword, you have to spend less money optimizing this search result. Another advantage is that a number 1 position in Google often remains at the top for a longer period of time, even if you stop hiring an SEO specialist or SEO agency.
Once you are visible by using White hat SEO, you have a good chance of reaping the benefits for a long time to come. You can also get ranked high by Black Hat SEO, but that effect can be temporary.
If SEO training is followed by a few employees, you are also better prepared for the future. Optimizing the website once and then handing it over to several employees can bring about significant changes.
# 8 SEO helps send people into a sales funnel
With a sales funnel, you have to think of the steps that a customer takes from realization to purchase. Suppose you run a business that sells gaming keyboards. Then you can use different pages on your website for the different phases in the sales funnel.
Certain pages can be used to inform about the different keyboards that exist. You can dedicate a page to the best ways to use a gaming keyboard. And you can dedicate a page to the best gaming keyboards of the year. Finally, the product pages with the gaming keyboards.
This way, you can give direction to the visitors for every step in the process. You can refer them from one page to another so that they end up with the product they want and make a purchase.
# 9 If you don't do SEO, your competitors will steal your (potential) customers
If you are a business that relies on online visibility but is not well found in the search engines, you can be sure that a competitor is.
If you are only dealing with advertisements and on your own social media channels, you give away work to your fellow entrepreneurs.
If you do not want competitors to take advantage of your unfamiliarity with SEO, make sure you quickly hire someone who will help you on the right path. It is a shame to give away low-hanging fruit to your competition. And even more difficult if you were to stop SEO, while the competitor continues with it.
