The digital marketing world continues to change and the strategies that were once effective a couple of years back no longer holds true today. A perfect example of this would be with SEO’s greater significance towards the success of businesses. Here are the top 5 reasons why that is.
- SEO drives traffic
Search is the number one driver of traffic to any content site, leaving behind social media. And with up to 80% of users ignoring paid search ads, choosing instead organic search results, there’s no doubt that SEO has a significant impact in driving traffic to a site.
Three key strategies in SEO help to drive traffic to a website:
- Keyword strategy. A strong keyword attracts both customers who are already at the end of the sales funnel and ready to make the purchase.
- Site optimization. This deals with the elements of the site that make it a prime pick for search engines at the top of their search results page. Elements include title tags, header tags, page copy, etc.
- URL structure. An easily recognizable URL with clear words separated with hyphens and in lowercase bodes well for the ranking of the website.
- SEO is a cost-effective marketing tool
It’s typical for small to medium-sized businesses to be spending as much as 12% of their total revenue on marketing campaigns. This is a huge marketing cost considering that many digital marketing campaigns don’t necessarily provide the desired results.
A well-planned SEO strategy by an experienced digital marketing company can help a business grow fast and help outrank the competition. Like all marketing campaigns, it also costs money but compared to other marketing techniques, SEO offers better results relative to what the business pays for.
- SEO provides a better user experience
Search engine optimization is more than just placing the right keywords into the content of the website. It takes more than that to help it rank higher in search. Another factor that search engines take into consideration when they rank websites is user experience. SEO can help optimize the site that the experience for the user is smooth, enjoyable, and encourage them to convert.
A great way to improve user experience is by publishing content that educates, engages, and offers value to the audience. SEO dictates that site owners and managers constantly update their content to stay relevant and maintain their search ranking.
- SEO boosts organic search
One primary source of the site traffic is through organic search. It’s a crucial factor in a site’s performance as well as serving as a critical component that helps users engage or complete a conversion.
SEO experts help increase organic search through the following:
- Decreasing the bounce rate of users through site optimization techniques
- Utilizing techniques that optimize content such as using more targeted keywords, shorter paragraphs, using mixed sentence lengths, including images and screenshots, etc.
- Increasing the speed of the website and optimizing it for voice search
- SEO helps build trust
A business is only successful when it establishes a group of loyal customers and to do that it must first establish trust. This can be established quickly with the help of a good SEO strategy.
The first step in establishing trust and credibility is through publishing valuable, SEO-optimized content. It should meet the needs of the readers and easily accessible. This can be achieved in a number of ways:
- Hit them with the right keywords – You’re not just looking for traffic to your site, you’re looking for the right traffic, one that easily converts or one that finds value in your content.
- Focus on owned media – Also known as content marketing that is based on your brand. This gives you full control over content quality as well as builds credibility among your target audience.
- Asking only when ready – This means aligning your call-to-actions with the level of trust you’ve nurtured with your audience.
