The importance of SEO is touted far and wide, but what does it actually do for you? Several things, in fact. Here’s a closer look at the ways in which SEO impacts your business and its overall success.
Establishing Trust and Credibility.
Transacting business requires a sense of trust between provider and customer, but that can mean different things. For instance, Australian market surveys have shown that 60% of Aussies interpret “trust” as “the company does what it promises to do” whereas the other 40% take it as “the company is ethical in their operation”.
Good SEO goes a long way toward catering to both opinions. This is to do with content: if it’s in-depth, informative, and easy to understand, it lends the business a sense of transparency and integrity. A fleshed-out website is more trustworthy than a sparse landing page leading right into a pile of product descriptions.
Improved Visibility.
Quality SEO dramatically improves your brand’s visibility to both your target customers and potential business partners. Most people’s interactions with your business will begin with online queries. These initial interactions can be generally divided into two categories: brand discovery and brand research.
Brand discovery refers to people who find your own business for the first time through online searches. For example, let’s say someone wants to find a reliable Sydney SEO company. That’s what they’ll search for and you want to appear in those results.
Brand research refers to the initial “get-to-know-you” interactions after discovery, but before committing to a business. People will want to check your brand’s reputation, persona, etc. They will browse accordingly, and you want to show up in those results too.
Consequently, you want to position your own pages near the top of the first page of search results. For brand discovery, focus on your website’s homepage or your primary social media. For brand research, promote testimonials, portfolio highlights, etc. Good SEO will induce searchers to come to your own site in addition to third-party sources.
Increased Traffic Rates.
Stemming from the above point, when you are visible and well-positioned on search engine result pages you should naturally see an increase in traffic. The primary source of website traction is organic search. Invest in your long-term SEO strategy and aim to have numerous high-ranking links.
In this sense, SEO is more effective than any other marketing strategy, including paid ads. That’s because the traffic you get from organic searches is more interesting in general: these people come to your pages because you offer what they’re looking for.
By contrast, paid ads and similar outreach tactics aim widely and hope for the best. Those whom you reach with these strategies might not actually want your service when they see your ad. But someone who organically searched for a query related to your business has an immediate problem, wants a present solution, and is, therefore, more likely to convert.
Improved User Experience.
This is more of a side effect but is nonetheless important. Search engines reward websites that are user-friendly. Great content won’t reach people if your site is unintuitive, hard to navigate, slow, etc.
Good SEO naturally forces you to optimize these technical aspects. It includes:
- addressing indexing errors
- fixing broken links
- removing cumbersome duplicate content
- making the site mobile-friendly, and
- ensuring quick loading (2-3 seconds per page).
Optimizing these factors induces visitors to stay on your website longer, reduces bounce rates, and improves your standing with search engines.
Increased Conversion Rate.
When you increase your traffic volume by means of good SEO, you gain more leads which vastly increases your overall chances of getting conversions. The effects are felt on your business even if the increase seems small.
Let’s say you pull traffic of 10,000 visitors per month before implementing SEO. then you implement your strategy and your traffic jumps to 50,000 leads per month. Not all of those will convert of course, but even a 2% upwards nudge means an additional 800 successful sales.
How do you give that final push from lead to conversion? Through quality, well-optimized content. Useful and informative content is the staple of good SEO. It lets your website visitors understand precisely what you offer and how that helps them. They, therefore, see your offer as more valuable than your competitors and are more likely to go through with a purchase.
SEO impacts several essential aspects of your success. Good SEO will establish you as a credible, trustworthy business and contribute positively to the overall customer experience. It will boost your visibility online which increases your organic traffic. All this comes together in higher conversion rates, more sales, and a noticeably better bottom line.