The world is evolving and digital marketing is no more just a display of knowledge and modernity. Digital marketing is fast becoming the backbone that every business needs to thrive and outperform others. It is now an effective tool that businesses use to sell their products and services and reach out to their target audiences.
One aspect of digital marketing is Search Engine Optimisation {SEO}. The purpose of this article is to elaborate on why SEO matters in today’s digital marketing.
But before we go on, here’s a question for you: Do you think websites appear on the first page of search engine results by luck or by accident?
The answer to that question is NO! Website owners whose websites rank first on search engine result pages know the essence of Search Engine Optimisation. And so they’ve incorporated SEO to be on top and remain on top of SERPs. However, some people still have the misconception that SEO is only important for the business’s online presence.
They think that SEO doesn’t affect other parts of a business such as its reputation, sales and traffic. But if you must know, there’s a strong connection between the online and offline parts of any business and Search Engine Optimisation has a significant effect on both parts.
Very shortly, we’ll show you the importance of SEO and why SEO matters; in subsequent paragraphs, you’ll realize that search engine optimization can help you reach out to a larger audience, increase your website traffic and generate leads.
8 Reasons why SEO Matters
Below is a list of different reasons why SEO matters for any business that wants to thrive online.
- Search engines are the primary source for website visits
The term organic search is used for search engine results that are naturally generated without external or commercial interference like Ads. Organic results play a significant role in measuring a website’s performance, and this is why your website needs to be optimized by the guidelines of the search engines. And they include various important pointers like website speed, user experience and providing top-notch content.
According to research, Google owns an average of 74.54% of the market’s net share. This shows that Google is indeed the king of the market. That’s why only Google’s guidelines and instructions matter for search engine optimisation. However, this doesn’t dwindle the importance of other search engines like Bing, Yahoo etc.
There are two most visited websites in the world. Google is the first most visited website followed by YouTube. Also, Google is the owner of Gmail too; the biggest and most popular email provider with over a billion users around the globe.
You may be asking, why is this information important?
The advantage is that you’ll find yourself paying a visit to Google every day maybe once or twice. When you visit Google, it’s either to get any information or do some research. This should get you thinking about how many people use Google just like you? How many people around the globe visit google to make enquiries about certain things every day?
The number of people that visit Google every day is almost countless and it would be unwise to not take advantage of it. When your website appears on search engine result pages as a tested and trusted source of information, it will affect your business whether it’s a private or commercial one. But this is only possible when you optimize your website for SEO.
- There may be a lot of users looking for you on the internet
Almost half of the world’s population or approximately 3.9 billion people use the Internet every day. And at least 40,000 searches are made every second and in a day all the searches sum up to roughly 3.5 billion searches every day.
Right now, your mind should be calculating what kind of opportunities your business will be exposed to if it shows up on any of these searches, at least considering the numbers involved.
So if you’re a gym instructor in the area, the search volume of the keyword “gym instructor” could be 15,300 and if you offer plumbing services, the volume of “plumbing services” could be 9,900. These volumes show the opportunities your business could be exposed to. But then you may still be asking yourself if SEO matters when the truth is your business may likely not show up in any of those searches without SEO.
- You can put those searches and that traffic into use
The number of visits your sites get through search engines can prove to be very useful for conversions. A website conversion is when a user completes an action on your site such as signing up for newsletters or making a purchase on your site. The total percentage of users that complete their actions are called conversion rates.
By incorporating search engine optimisation strategies into your website, you can use search engines to increase your conversion rates and consequently enlarge your customer base.
- SEO can help with your sales funnel
Search engine optimization isn’t a second choice to fall back to when other options fail for your website. Instead, it is the basic need of your website and your business. This is the 21st century and any business that lacks an active online presence will lose valuable opportunities and might as well be considered a failed business.
Believe it or not, search engine optimisation affects your sales since the sole reason why a user enters your website is to check out the services or product you’re offering. This means they’re interested in what you have to offer. That’s why you must implement all SEO strategies you can lay your hands on; with more focus on the ones that can help increase the traffic to your site and also help you generate new leads.
- SEO is budget friendly
You may be wondering, with all the benefits of SEO, how much does it cost? Well, the good news is that SEO is free and you can even optimize your website by yourself. But if your goal is to get the best result, you should employ the service of an expert or a professional to get the job done for you. But of course, you’ll have to pay them for their services– and yes that’s the only cost involved with SEO. If you can’t afford that, some tools can help to optimize your sites e.g GoDaddy’s SEO tool.
It will help gather more traffic to your sites by optimizing your websites to rank higher on SERPs and track and measure your website’s ranking. It even goes a step further in helping you with keyword suggestions.
You get all these for free and even if the tools will cost you, it still won’t be as expensive as running a TV or magazine ad.
- SEO doesn’t mean neglecting paid campaigns
Most people still have the misconception that search engine optimisation(SEO) and search engine marketing(SEM) are the same.
What SEO involves is simply putting the right keywords in strategic places in your content and helping your website rank organically on SERPs. On the other hand, SEM means paying a sum of money to display your ads to users who are making searches for the keywords you’re targeting. When SEM is successfully done, your website will surely rank high on Google.
If your website already has the backing of some strategies and already has a secured position and ranking in SERPs, then you may not need paid ads. However, SEO and SEM work simultaneously and taking advantage of both strategies will increase your website’s ranking and generate more leads. So the best thing to do is to make good use of SEO and still incorporate SEM whenever you can.
- Search engines work 24/7
Search engines and websites do not have opening and closing hours. So when you invest properly in SEO and optimising your website, your website will start to increase in rank on search engine result pages.
With this, even when you’re sleeping, the search engine will keep doing its job and your website will continue to receive more visitors and customers. This means that with the help of SEO, you can rest assured that marketing activities don’t stop on your website.
- SEO is a long-term strategy
The search engine doesn’t work like magic. It’s a process that requires time. It doesn’t matter if you’re using the organic method or paid method, you’ll require time to get effective results.
The time for SEO strategies to start taking effect on your site can be between 6 to 12 months and this is possible if the strategies are implemented rightly.
However, you should be careful about preventing it just because your website is looking good on search engines. The reason is that there’ll always be competitors who are not relenting in their efforts to rank on search engines too. So if you slack, they’re ready to take your place.
Hence, you’ll have to continue optimising your website and providing quality and top-notch content to maintain your website’s position on SERPs.
