In a world where people turn to the internet for almost everything: shopping, searching for educational resources or information, finding contact details for a business, search engines have the power to be one of your greatest marketing tools. It’s vital that your website can be easily found when people are searching for information about your products or services. One of the main benefits of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is that it will improve your chances of appearing in search listings so the quality and quantity of website visitors will improve – resulting in more leads and more customers.
SEO spending is an investment so it’s important not to see the time and money spent on SEO solely as a marketing cost. After all, if you spend wisely, you will see an ROI that proves it’s worth as an investment.
Here’s are some of the ways how…
Targeted traffic growth
The highest-ranking pages naturally receive the most clicks, giving rise to significant increases in website traffic. Creating the page titles and descriptions (aka meta data) that appear in the search listings which are highly relevant to a particular search term or keyword will increase the click-through rate of quality visitors to your website. By which we mean potential customers with a high-buying intent.
Organic blog subscribers
Visitors who have found your website via a search engine such as Google will be interested in your blog topics and are likelier to follow you and subscribe to your social media and newsletters. Organic traffic arrives through direct interest, so ensure you are creating the sort of content that your target audience wants.
Improving user engagement
SEO, when done professionally, will involve some Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) to keep visitors on your website for longer and encourage them to take the appropriate action: buy a product, sign-up, book a call-back etc. A high engagement rate* further improvse your SEO rankings. So Google learns your page is valuable to visitors and rewards you with a higher ranking.
*Note: Engagement Rate is a new Google Analytics 4 metric similar to the inverse of the old Bounce Rate in Universal Analytics.
Promoting brand recognition
Having your website in the highest ranking positions will give you greater brand recognition. People perceive the organic results appearing on the first few pages of Google (below the Sponsored Ads) as more trustworthy. The more visible your content, the more your brand will become known and trusted.
Better site usability
SEO and user experience are heavily entwined. The more easily your website is navigable, the better the user experience. On-site optimisation tasks include rearranging the website’s internal links and architecture to ensure website pages are easy to find and use. Search engines are then better able to locate and understand individual pages on the website.
SEO techniques and processes in practise
The better your website is from front to back and top to bottom, the more easily people will find it and want to view it. SEO works by combining a data-driven approach with optimising your content for the keywords and search phrases that users are likely to use if they are interested in your products or services, or if they want to know more about a topic in which you are an expert.
Here are just some of the basic areas of importance for a successful programme that will deliver the benefits of SEO:
Keyword analysis
Keywords or longer search phrases are the foundations behind SEO. If you provide high-quality, informative content that is relevant to particular searches, then you will be making a great start towards increasing Google rankings and visibility of your website.
Keyword Research and Analysis is a whole topic in it’s own right so read more about it in our Keyword Research & Analysis Guide.
Backlinks
When credible and reputable websites link to your website these “backlinks” help to build the credibility and authority of your own website, and are key factors in maximising organic traffic. Backlinking is an area where it pays to take expert advice, because a “backlink profile” (i.e. all the backlinks to your website and their combined SEO metrics) must be built strategically to ensure the time and effort expended delivers a positive impact.
Read more about our High-quality Link-building Process.
Content Marketing
Effective content marketing will allow you to reach existing and prospective customers better. It will increase user engagement, build trust and display the human side of your business. You can use the results of a keyword analysis to help build relevancy and consistency into your content. Optimising your digital presence through social media activity, blog posts, webpage text, infographics, videos, podcasts and newsletters that drive SEO engagement will be more visible to audiences and let them know what your business is about.
Final Thoughts
Google ranking performance can take time, and you need to put in the ongoing effort to rank high enough to reap the benefits that a first-page search engine ranking can bring. If your business struggles with, or doesn’t have the time for, realising the benefits of SEO optimisation and keyword analysis, why not use our SEO strategy services to get your business the results it deserves?
Of course, you can pay for sponsored adverts with pay-per-click marketing campaigns, but for a better return on investment growing organic traffic has been shown to generate 3 times more conversions than paid/sponsored web traffic. Add to that the trust and brand building benefits of SEO, plus the fact that audiences are becoming more aware of the quality of organic search listings over the sponsored Ads, and SEO is the obvious choice.
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