SEO is one of the most important parts of an effective online marketing strategy. Here are the top 5 SEO benefits to show you that if you’re not currently doing it – well, then maybe you should be.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock or cryogenically frozen for the past twenty years, you’ve probably heard of SEO, or as its mother calls it when she’s angry, “Search Engine Optimization.” It’s kind of a huge deal now, thanks to a small startup named Google. Maybe you’ve heard of them, too.
Though the digital landscape has changed dramatically since search engine marketing became a thing (heck, it’s probably even changed since you started reading this post), SEO has remained an effective and important marketing strategy.
We’d even go so far as to say SEO is one of the most effective and important marketing strategies.
To fully appreciate why, let’s first get a little 101. What exactly is SEO marketing?
Simply put, it is the process of getting qualified users to visit your site by improving how well your site appears in search engine results.
A key importance is that SEO marketing drives organic traffic from people searching for things online as opposed to paid search traffic, which comes from running pay-per-click (PPC) ads.
If you’re not sure why any of this matters, you’ve come to the right place.
Even if you’re familiar with SEO, and you know full well the difference between a title tag and a 301 redirect, you might be wondering how much SEO you actually need. Well, we’re here to put the matter to rest.
Just like with puppies and pizza, you can never get enough SEO. Let’s see why…
Benefits of SEO for Business Growth
While there are many benefits to a good SEO strategy, we have outlined the top 5 to help you understand (or remind you!) why SEO is simply awesome.
SEO Benefit #1: Increase Quality Traffic to Your Site
They say it’s lonely at the top. But is it really?
Not when it comes to search engine marketing. Quite the contrary. There’s actually a lot of people up there.
- The top 3 Google search results get 75% of all clicks
- The top spot on mobile gets 27.7% of all clicks (The second gets 9.2%)
- On average, moving up one spot increases CTR by 30.8%
- 75% never make it past the first page of search results
- Organic search contributes 51% of site traffic
So, it’s no surprise that one of the primary goals of SEO is to push your site into the coveted top three positions in the search engine result pages (SERPs). These spots on the first page receive a majority of the impressions and clicks. Ranking in these high positions can result in significant traffic increases.
The benefit is a surge in people visiting your site, seeing your products, and being exposed to your brand.
But the benefits of SEO don’t end there.
Another primary goal of SEO focuses on creating engaging search snippets.
SEO uses informative and keyword-relevant title tags and meta descriptions to not only help drive traffic to your site but to attract the right type of people to your site — the people mostly like to read what you’re writing and buy what you’re selling.
Having optimized tags and descriptions help to increase click-through rate (CTR), and qualified web traffic.
So, let SEO take you higher. The view is amazing up here.
SEO Benefit #2: Generate a Higher ROI
If knowledge is power, then SEO turns you into a freakin’ superhero.
SEO provides ridiculous amounts of trackable and quantifiable results. This goes for both e-commerce and non-e-commerce sites. All of which work toward one end — improving your return-on-investment (ROI).
One of the biggest debates that companies have over pursuing SEO is whether or not it is worth it. As in, does it improve the bottom line?
Oh boy, does it ever!
On average, companies make more money from organic search than any other traffic source. In fact, it’s been reported that 40% of business revenue comes from organic traffic.
But raking in the Benjamins isn’t the only ROI benefit from SEO.
With SEO, you can track nearly every aspect of your strategy, like increases in rankings, traffic, and conversions. You even have the ability to see demographic information and other individual engagement metrics.
For e-commerce sites, SEO analytics show which paths users take to complete a sale, right down to which keyword they used to search for you before purchasing. For non-e-commerce sites, you can attribute values to your lead conversions. For example, you can see how many conversions came from your ‘contact us’ form fill-out.
All this data is super valuable and is especially important in times of economic uncertainty.
These comprehensive analytics not only allow you to calculate the value of your SEO strategy, but they also provide insight into the best ways to grow your business in every way.
SEO Benefit #3: More Cost-Effective
SEO is one of the most cost-effective marketing strategies. That’s just something else that will make your ROI skyrocket even higher. This is due in part to its inbound nature, which helps businesses save more money compared to outbound strategies.
Take cold-calling.
While cold-calling can still be an effective outbound marketing strategy, only 16% of businesses saw higher ROI from outbound marketing than they did with inbound digital marketing tactics, like SEO.
Also, no one’s going to hang up in your face. That’s what we call a win-win.
And since SEO also targets users who are actively looking for your products and services online, the traffic resulting from SEO is more qualified than many other marketing strategies. This results in even more cost-savings for companies.
The only question now is what are you going to do with all that money you’re saving with SEO?
Might we suggest buying a puppy or a pizza? We hear you can’t get enough of those.
SEO Benefit #4: Improve site usability
SEO simultaneously makes your website more navigable for both users and search engines.
One aspect of performing on-page optimization is to rearrange a site’s architecture to make pages easier to find and navigate. This not only improves the efficiency with which search engine crawlers index your site, but it also makes it easier for users to use your site.
Because, you see, SEO isn’t just about keywording and backlinking. It’s about creating a positive user experience. User experience (UX) is how people interact with your brand, products, and services. The better the experience, the better your returns.
Good SEO decreases bounce rates, increases time spent on site, optimizes conversion rates, and improves page load speed, all of which add up to one stellar user experience.
This is especially huge, given that Google uses a mobile-first indexing strategy. This means Google now ranks your site according to the mobile experience it provides.
Over 52% of web traffic comes from mobile. Yet, around 25% of the most popular sites are not mobile-friendly. That means there’s big potential to outrank a lot of sites by equipping yours with a more mobile-centric user experience.
Your users will love it. Search engines will love it. You will love it.
SEO Benefit #5: Promote Brand Awareness and Credibility
High rankings for your webpages translate to more exposure for your brand.
Being on the first page for your targeted keywords not only helps users to associate your brand with those keywords, but it instills trust since companies on the first page are generally perceived to be more credible.
And everyone knows search cred is one of the best types of cred to have.
In that regard, another benefit of SEO is that it levels the playing field.
There was a time not so long ago when it was incredibly hard for smaller businesses to compete with bigger companies because of the difference in their marketing budgets. SEO has stepped in to give everyone a shot.
If your pages rank in one of the top three SERP spots, especially for competitive keywords, it can instantly boost your reputation and convey social proof.
After all, you wouldn’t be at the top unless you were popular and credible, right? Or at least that’s how high rankings are perceived. Because in reality, popularity has nothing to do with it. You just need a really good SEO team.
So, the more your pages and content rank in high positions in search results, the more chances you have for users to see your content and associate with your brand.
All this adds up to more clicks, more conversions, and more pizza. Lots and lots of pizza.
Conclusion
So, how do you like them benefits?
Like we said at the start, there are a lot of perks to adding search engine optimization into your digital marketing strategy, such as SEO benefits for local businesses. But these top 5 SEO benefits definitely take the slice, which is why so many companies are prioritizing SEO in their inbound marketing efforts this year.
Although if you’re still on the fence about whether SEO could be beneficial to your website, or have questions about the right ways to go about implementing it, don’t hesitate to get in contact with us.
We’ll give you a free SEO consultation and fill you in on exactly what you need to take full advantage of all the benefits of SEO.
We can also help you figure out what type of puppy you should get and pizza you should order.
Hint: It’s pepperoni. And a goldendoodle. I mean, look at these guys.