The average American spends 24 hours per week online. This means that if you’re trying to reach your target audience, you should be on the web. Your digital marketing efforts will either make or break your business.
Every strong digital marketing strategy needs to include search engine optimization (or SEO). We’re here to talk about the benefits of SEO so you can decide if it’s right for your business. Read on to learn more.
1. You’ll Get More Organic Leads
When you first started your website, you likely considered opting for SEM and PPC ads, right? While these are great for generating initial website traffic, they won’t give you organic leads.
When you use SEO to boost your site instead, you’ll know that the traffic that you’re bringing in is all organic (as long as you’re using white hat SEO tactics). This means that the people who visit your website are genuinely interested in your content, products, or services. They’re more likely to turn into genuine leads and even customers.
When your website is near the top of the search engine rankings without being artificially pinned there, all of your visitors will visit by choice.
2. You Can Build a Brand
Improving your SEO is great for boosting your overall brand.
As a business owner, you need to prioritize your brand image. You can have the best products and services around, but if you’re not focusing on branding, no one will ever see them.
Everything from your social media presence to your website is part of your brand.
When your website becomes more visible to people on the web, they’ll associate your name with your niche. Even if they’ve never clicked on your site, they’ll remember you as long as you maintain that top spot.
This is great for building and expanding your brand awareness.
3. You’ll Prove That You’re an Authority Within Your Niche
If you want potential clients and customers to trust you and use your products and service, you need to prove that you’re an authority within your niche. What makes you better or more knowledgeable than your competitors?
When you use SEO blog posts, you’re showing that you know all there is to know about your niche. You’re also showing that you’re committed to continuing learning (so you can continue to generate compelling SEO content.
Let’s use a business that sells vitamins as an example.
If the website is full of helpful articles about different types of vitamins, health, and fitness, don’t they seem authoritative? Aren’t you more likely to trust them and buy their products?
Regardless of what type of business you’re running, you can use this tactic as well. This is how you build customer trust.
4. SEO is Cost-Effective
Many business owners worry that SEO won’t fit into their budgets. While you’re working with a tight marketing budget at first, SEO isn’t going to be the most expensive thing on there.
You could try to do SEO on your own for free, but if you’re not experienced with it, it’s unlikely that your SEO campaign will be effective. That said, hiring SEO professionals is affordable enough for most small business owners.
Most SEO companies charge a flat rate and offer different scalable packages that can suit a variety of budgets.
You don’t have to pay for ineffective web ads, billboards, trade show booths, or other marketing materials.
5. You Get Long-Term Results
Alongside the affordability of SEO services, they also give you long-term results. SEO is the gift that keeps on giving.
Once you build your SEO, it continues building upon itself. More people will continue clicking on your website, which will keep it near the top of the search engine rankings.
Individual posts will get less effective over time (especially as SEO best practices continue to change), but as long as you update posts and continue posting on a regular schedule, you should be able to maintain your place.
If your website starts to slip, just rework your SEO strategy and you’ll be back at the top in no time. It takes a long time to get there, but the results are worthwhile.
Tip: while you’re waiting for your SEO results, this is the best time to use PPC. This will get you short-term traffic right away.
6. It Boosts the Rest of Your Marketing Strategy
SEO is only one part of a strong marketing strategy, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t use it to boost the rest of your marketing. You can use your SEO alongside your social media strategy with ease (and combining the two will make both of them more effective).
After you receive your SEO content, you can repurpose it on your social media channels. Turn it into a video, a podcast, or the caption on a social media post. Share your SEO blog post on your business’s Facebook or your own LinkedIn account.
You’re creating a digital marketing ecosystem. People will get to your social channels through your website and vice versa.
You can also use your SEO content to gather traffic from other websites when you use this content syndication service. You have so many options!
7. It Lets You Keep Up With Your Competition
This is one of the biggest benefits of SEO for your business. Your competitors are already using it as a part of their digital marketing strategies. That’s right: if you’re reading this article, you’re already behind.
When you Google your niche, what businesses come up first? Those are the businesses that are using great SEO tactics to boost their brands. You can’t beat them unless you use their tactics.
Take Advantage of the Benefits of SEO in 2022
You can’t overlook the importance of SEO when you’re assembling your digital marketing strategy. Yes, it’s not as flashy as social media marketing, but it will give you slow (but long-term) growth and more organic leads.
Contact an SEO company to take advantage of the benefits of SEO today.
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